ill! 


i 

(!  1  ililHl  if! 


11 


I 


ii 


w 


mm 


ill 


III 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/educationforeffiOOedavrich 


EDUCA'riON:;.?::;;..: 
FOR    EFFICIENCY 


A    DISCUSSION    OF    CERTAIN    PHASES    OF   THE 

PROBLEM  OF  UNIVERSAL  EDUCATION  WITH 

SPECIAL  REFERENCE  TO   ACADEMIC 

IDEALS  AND  METHODS 


BY 


E.   DAVENPORT,  M.Agr.,  LL.D. 

DEAN  OF  THE  COLLEGE  OF  AGRICULTURE 

AND 

DIRECTOR  OF  THE  AGRICULTURAL  EXPERIMENT  STATION 

UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 


REVISED  EDITION' 


D.   C    HEATH   &   CO.,   PUBLISHERS 
BOSTON  NEW  YORK  CHICAGO 


.  »  4 


Copyright,  1909  and  19 14 
By  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co. 

I  G4 


AGRin.  DEPT,    ff^i^y<^..^c[c^a:f^^c^n 


PREFACE  TO  REVISED  EDITION 

Since  the  publication  of  Education  for  Efificiency  some  five 
years  ago  many  of  its  ideals  and  purposes  have  been  more  than 
realized.  Probably  nothing  better  expresses  the  present  state  of 
mind  of  most  educators  than  the  following  series  of  propositions 
published  in  a  recent  report  of  the  Illinois  Educational  Commision  : 

I.  That  the  high  school  completes  the  formal  education  for 
most  of  its  students,  and  this  fact  rather  than  the  preparation  for 
college  should  dominate  its  policy. 

II.  That  the  high  school  curriculum  should,  therefore,  dis- 
tinctly recognize  the  vocational  needs  of  the  pupil,  defining  voca- 
tion broadly  enough  to  cover  all  the  useful  activities,  ranging  from 
industry  for  the  masses  to  literature,  business,  and  art  for  the  few. 

III.  That  at  least  one-fourth  of  the  student's  time  in  high  school 
should  be  devoted  to  this  vocational  work,  and  three-fourths  to 
non- vocational,  upon  the  ground  that  the  student,  in  order  to 
make  a  useful  member  of  society,  should,  for  a  portion  of  his  time 
each  day  after  reaching  the  high  school  age,  become  possessed  of 
a  deep  sense  of  vocational  consciousness  demanding  special  train- 
ing looking  to  his  own  activities,  but  that  at  the  same  time,  in 
order  to  be  most  effective  and  rational,  he  should  also  devote  the 
major  portion  of  his  time  to  what  other  men  have  thought  and 
said  and  done,  or  are  preparing  to  do,  and  to  the  facts  of  nature. 

IV.  That  the  instruction  in  vocational  courses  of  high  schools 
should  be  as  useful  for  practical  purposes  as  is  that  in  the  same 
subjects  in  schools  devoted  exclusively  to  technical  training.  In 
no  other  way  can  the  higher  phases  of  public  education  hold  their 
own  against  the  competition  of  the  trade  school  and  prevent  its 
supplanting  to  an  undue  extent  a  broader  system  for  the  education 
of  the  young. 

V.  That  therefore  the  typical  high  school  should  introduce  into 
curriculum  at  the  present  time  at  least  six  vocational  courses  cor- 
responding to  the  six  broad  avenues  leading  into  the  chief  activ- 
ities of  civilized  man ;  namely : 


5540J54 


iv  PREFACE 

1.  A  course  leading  to  the  speaking  and  writing  professions 
with  language,  literature,  and  history  as  its  main  subjects. 

2.  A  course  leading  to  the  scientific  professions,  especially  medi- 
cine and  surgery,  and  devoting  its  chief  attention  to  biology,  physics, 
and  chemistry,  studies  dealing  with  life  and  the  conditions  of  Ufe. 

3.  A  course  leading  to  the  profession  of  farming  with  special 
reference  to  the  domesticated  animals  and  plants,  and  to  the  soil 
as  the  sustainer  of  life,  supported  by  the  physical  sciences  and  by 
the  principles  of  accounting. 

4.  A  course  preparing  for  useful  and  artistic  construction  in  the 
building  trades  and  in  most  lines  of  manufacture.  Here,  manual 
training,  mathematics,  physics,  and  art  should  hold  the  leading 
place. 

5.  A  course  leading  to  the  calHngs  of  the  business  world,  with 
commercial  geography,  economics,  industrial  history,  commercial 
arithmetic,  commercial  law,  book-keeping,  stenography,  and  type- 
writing as  its  most  prominent  features. 

6.  A  course  dealing  with  the  application  of  science  and  of  art 
to  the  affairs  of  the  well-ordered  home.  Here  sewing,  cooking, 
food  values,  marketing,  serving,  nursing,  sanitation,  textiles,  home 
decoration,  and  the  laws  of  physical,  moral,  and  mental  develop- 
ment in  childhood  are  the  special  studies. 

The  proposed  high  school  course  in  agriculture  pubHshed  in  the 
first  edition  of  this  book  has  now  been  replaced  by  the  more 
modem  course  in  the  report  above  quoted.  While  many  different 
outlines  of  study  have  been  successfully  taught,  this  perhaps  serves 
well  to  illustrate  the  present  practice,  except  that  in  many  instances 
teachers  prefer  to  introduce  animal  studies  during  the  first  year. 

In  addition  to  the  formal  vocational  courses  offered  in  the  high 
schools,  a  good  many  of  these  schools  are  beginning  to  offer  also 
short  courses,  part-time  courses,  night  schools,  et  cetera,  thus  fully 
occupying  a  field  that  has  been  so  extensively  advocated  for  the 
trade  school.  This,  of  course,  is  the  only  way  in  which  sparsely 
settled  districts,  like  country  communities,  can  have  anything  like 
well-ordered  schools. 

University  of  Illinois, 
Jane,  1914. 


CONTENTS 


PAGB 

Introduction i 


PART   I 

CHAPTER 

I.    Education  for  Efficiency .11 

II.    Industrial  Education  with  Special  Reference  to 

THE  High  School 37 

III.  Industrial  Education  a  Phase  of  the  Problem  of 

Universal  Education 60 

IV.  The  Educative  Value  of  Labor       ....      78 
V.    The  Culture  Aim  in  Education        ....      90 

VI.    Unity  in  Education 100 

PART  II 

VII.    Agriculture  in  the  High  Schools  .       .       .       .124 
VIII.    Agriculture  in  the  Elementary  Schools       .        .    138 
IX.    Agriculture  in  the  Normal  Schools      .        .        .    146 
X.    The    Development    of   American   Agriculture  — 

What  it  is  and  What  it  Means   .        .        .        .149 
XI.    The  Meaning  of  Agriculture 176 


EDUCATION   FOR   EFFICIENCY 

INTRODUCTION 

THE   RISE   OF    INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION 

It  was  a  great  thing  when  the  common  man  first 
lifted  up  his  head  and  said,  "  I,  too,  will  be  educated." 

We  have  entered  upon  an  era  of  universal  education, 
which  means  the  education  of  all  sorts  of  people  for  all 
sorts  of  purposes.  From  now  on  therefore  education  must 
serve  not  only  the  exceptional  five  per  cent  but  the  ninety- 
five  per  cent  of  common  men  as  well ;  it  must  not  only  fit 
for  the  so-called  learned  professions  but  it  must  also  train 
for  common  things,  else  it  is  not  universal,  —  a  new  fact 
that  involves,  I  imagine,  a  somewhat  radical  revision  of 
our  philosophy  of  education,  with  a  corresponding  broad- 
ening of  ideals  as  to  the  purposes,  the  materials,  and  the 
methods  of  instruction. 

Fifty-seven  years  ago  Professor  Jonathan  B.  Turner 
wrote :  ^ 

"All  civilized  society  is,  necessarily,  divided  into  two  distinct  coopera- 
tive, not  antagonistic,  classes  :  a  small  class,  whose  proper  business  it  is 
to  teach  the  true  principles  of  religion,  law,  medicine,  science,  art,  and 
literature ;  and  a  much  larger  class  who  are  engaged  in  some  form  of 
labor,  in  agriculture,  commerce,  and  the  arts.  For  the  sake  of  con- 
venience, we  will  designate  the  former  the  Professional,  and  the  latter  the 
Industrial,  class,  not  implying  that  each  may  not  be  equally  industrious, 
the  one  in  their  intellectual,  the  other  in  their  industrial,  pursuits. 
Probably  in  no  case  would  society  ever  need  more  than  five  men  out  of 

1  From  "A  Plan  for  an  Industrial  University,"  United  States  Patent  Office  Report,  1852. 

I 


2  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

one  hundred  in  the  professional  dass,  leaving  ninety-five  in  every  hun- 
dred in  the  industrial ;  and,  so  long  as  so  many  of  our  ordinary  teachers 
and  public  men  are  taken  from  the  industrial  cjass,  as  there  are  at  present, 
and  probably  will  be  for  generations  to  come,  we  do  not  really  need  over 
one  professional  man  for  every  hundred,  leaving  ninety-nine  in  the 
industrial  class. 

"The  vast  difference,  in  the  practical  means,  of  an  appropriate 
liberal  education,  suited  to  their  wants  and  their  destiny,  which  these 
two  classes  enjoy,  and  ever  have  enjoyed  the  world  over,  must  have 
arrested  the  attention  of  every  thinking  man.  True,  the  same  general 
abstract  science  exists  in  the  world  for  both  classes  alike,  but  the  means 
of  bringing  this  abstract  truth  into  effectual  contact  with  the  daily  busi- 
ness and  pursuits  of  the  one  class  does  exist,  while  in  the  other  case  it 
does  not  exist  and  never  can  till  it  is  new  created. 

"  The  one  class  have  schools,  seminaries,  colleges,  universities,  appa- 
ratus, professors,  and  multitudinous  appliances  for  educating  and  train- 
ing them  for  months  and  years,  for  the  peculiar  profession  which  is  to 
be  the  business  of  their  life ;  and  they  have  already  created,  each  class 
for  its  own  use,  a  vast  and  voluminous  literature,  that  would  wellnigh 
sink  a  whole  navy  of  ships. 

"  But  where  are  the  universities,  the  apparatus,  the  professors,  and  the 
literature,  specifically  adapted  to  any  one  of  the  industrial  classes  ? 
Echo  answers,  Where  ?  In  other  words,  society  has  become,  long  since, 
wise  enough  to  know  that  its  teachers  need  to  be  educated,  but  it  has 
not  become  wise  enough  to  know  that  its  workers  need  education  just  as 
much.  .  .  . 

"It  is  said  that  farmers  and  mechanics  do  not  and  will  not  read,  but 
I  say,  give  them  the  literature  and  the  education  suited  to  their  wants, 
and  see  if  it  does  not  reform  and  improve  them  as  it  has  reformed  and 
improved  their  professional  brethren.  The  agricultural  classes  have  no 
congenial  literature." 

In  these  few  words  Professor  Turner  outlined  both  the 
need  for  education  and  the  character  of  the  education  suited 
to  the  natural  needs  of  industrial  people.  They  were  written 
in  the  early  days  of  the  campaign  that  led  up  to  the  Land 
Grant  Act  of  1862,  by  which  every  state  has  come  to  have 
at  least  one  college  wherein  are  taught  the  subjects  that 


INTRODUCTION  3 

especially  pertain  to  industrial  life,  but  "  without  excluding 
other  scientific  and  classical  studies." 

This  was  the  first  far-reaching  step  in  this  country  to- 
ward an  adequate  system  of  education  for  industrial  people 
as  such.  Hitherto,  to  be  sure,  the  colleges  had  been  open 
to  young  men  from  the  industrial  ranks,  but  the  courses 
were  adapted  to  the  special  needs  of  Professor  Turner's 
five  per  cent  and  were  silent  upon  those  of  the  ninety-five. 

If,  therefore,  an  ambitious  young  man  from  the  indus- 
trial masses  perchance  entered  college  to  better  his  con- 
dition, the  inevitable  consequence  was  that  he  deserted  the 
ninety-five  and  joined  the  five  per  cent,  whereby  the  indus- 
trial masses  remained  uneducated  and  the  industries  un- 
developed and  tending  downward  as  the  result  of  universal 
education,  because  educational  influences  were  such  as  to 
abstract  from  the  industries  the  most  ambitious  and  the 
most  capable. 

This  draft  was  felt  hardest  upon  the  farm,  when  the 
great  commercial  activity  following  the  Civil  War  drew  by 
thousands  the  best  blood  out  of  the  country  into  the  city  ; 
off  the  land  and  into  the  office ;  away  from  independence 
into  dependent  positions  with  small  salary. 

The  Land  Grant  Act  was  the  first  step  in  the  correcting 
of  these  evil  tendencies,  in  that  agricultural  and  mechani- 
cal instruction  of  some  sort  was  provided  in  every  state  in 
the  Union.  It  was  followed  twenty-five  years  later  (1887) 
by  the  Hatch  Act,  founding  at  every  agricultural  college 
an  Experiment  Station  for  the  investigation  of  problems 
peculiarly  agricultural  and  for  the  pubUcation  of  the  results. 

Thus  came  to  be  built  up,  on  the  agricultural  side  at 
least,  the  literature  of  which  Professor  Turner  so  clearly 
saw  the  need.  This  also  strengthened  the  instruction  in 
the  college,  and  agricultural  as  well  as  engineering  colleges 


4  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

in  these  land-grant  institutions  were  soon  filled  with  stu- 
dents. Thus  industrial  education  became  established  in 
this  country,  and  first  of  all  on  college  levels.  It  yet  re- 
mains to  be  established  for  the  real  masses,  and  the  most 
important  educational  question  to-day  is  how  to  inaugurate 
an  adequate  scheme  of  industrial  education  of  secondary 
grade  and  below  in  order  to  be  within  the  reach  of  at  least 
the  greater  part  of  Turner's  ninety-five  per  cent.  This 
question  has  not  yet  been  settled,  and  it  is  the  conviction 
of  the  writer  that  as  yet  we  have  not  evolved  a  philosophy 
of  education  adequate  to  the  task  of  meeting  the  logical 
demands  of  a  real  system  of  universal  education. 

Gradually,  but  slowly,  men  have  learned  by  experience 
that  schooHng,  if  it  be  of  a  suitable  kind,  does  not  neces- 
sarily educate  away  from  industry,  and  further,  that  the 
kind  of  education  which  fits  for  industry  not  only  returns 
educated  men  to  industrial  life  but  also  and  inevitably 
develops  the  industries  to  a  level  that  is  unattainable  except 
through  education. 

It  was  far-sighted  educated  men  like  Turner  in  the 
West  and  McAllister,  Gregg,  Cameron,  and  Morrill  in  the 
East  that  first  saw  and  pointed  out  the  need  of  industrial  edu- 
cation. For  a  long  time  the  people  were  apathetic  or  resist- 
ant. They  desired  education;  indeed  they  demanded  it, 
but  it  was  for  the  purpose  of  "  rising  above  "  the  ordinary 
walks  of  life.  They  chiefly  desired  education  not  as  a 
source  of  personal  gratification  or  of  added  efficiency  in 
service,  but  that  they  "  would  not  have  to  work  so  hard 
as  their  fathers  did,"  and  for  a  generation  or  more  educa- 
tion was  regarded  as  the  avenue  out  of  industry  and  into 
an  "  easy  place " ;  out  of  humble  life  into  elegance  and 
prominence. 

Accordingly,  the  first  attempts  at  industrial  education, 


INTRODUCTION  5 

even  when  endowed  by  federal  support,  were  met  by  any- 
thing but  promising  results.  The  only  people  who  sup- 
ported the  agricultural  colleges  were  the  few  who  really 
desired  their  sons  to  be  educated,  but  had  learned  by  ob- 
servation that  the  old-line  college  courses  educated  away 
from  the  farm. 

From  the  first,  the  attempt  to  teach  industrial  courses  was 
attended  by  peculiar  difficulties.  As  Turner  had  remarked, 
there  was  no  Uterature.  There  was  lacking,  therefore, 
both  material  and  method,  and  it  would  take  a  book  sim- 
ply to  record  the  academic  blunders  and  the  professional 
shortsightedness  that  characterized  the  first  quarter  of  a 
century  of  this  attempt.  Teachers  were  as  lacking  as  was 
appropriate  literature,  and  these  have  had  to  be  de- 
veloped by  the  slow  evolution  of  internal  processes,  because 
we  have  beheld  the  unparalleled  prospect  of  a  generation 
of  self-made  teachers  evolving  with  their  own  experience 
both  the  matter  and  the  methods  of  an  entirely  new  educa- 
tional field. 

Quite  naturally  the  first  attempts  at  teaching  were  little 
more  than  an  effort  to  train  in  handicraft,  developing  the 
art  side  of  industries  in  imitation  of  the  obsolete  apprentice 
system,  and  it  has  taken  a  generation  of  experience  to 
teach  us  that  what  is  needed  in  industrial  education  is  not 
so  much  the  art  as  the  science  of  the  craft ;  not  so  much 
the  practice  as  the  principle,  which  only  is  educative,  and 
on  which  only  the  industry  and  the  man  can  be  developed 
together. 

Harassing  and  full  of  delay  as  all  these  troubles  have 
been,  we  have  gradually  learned  two  fundamental  facts, 
viz.  first,  that  the  industrial  man  is  the  better  for  being 
suitably  educated;  and  second,  that  industry  develops  with 
that  sort  of  education  of  industrial  people  which  retains 


6  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

them  among  the  industries  and  does  not  drive  or  lead  them 
out.  Agriculture,  like  engineering,  is  rapidly  becoming 
more  difficult,  and  in  many  of  its  phases  has  already  passed 
beyond  the  compass  of  the  uneducated. 

We  are  gradually  learning,  too,  that  it  does  not  pay  to 
try  to  hold  individuals  either  within  or  without  the  bonds 
of  industrial  life,  but  that  it  is  the  best  public  policy  to 
leave  nature  alone  in  this  respect  and  let  the  individual 
decide  his  own  destiny  after  a  fair  opportunity  for  choice 
of  occupation. 

With  a  feeling  of  confidence  established  at  these  points, 
the  demand  for  industrial  education  as  such  is  strongly 
felt  and  is  now  becoming  surprisingly  general,  so  general 
as  to  amount  to  a  demand  that  must  be  reckoned  with, 
and  that  at  once.  This  demand  takes  one  or  the  other  of 
two  forms:  either  that  industrial  schools  shall  be  more 
generally  estabHshed,  or  else  that  industrial  courses  shall 
be  added  to  the  curricula  of  existing  schools.  Which  one  of 
these  two  demands  to  recognize  is  the  most  difficult  of  all 
questions  for  educators  to  solve,  because  in  its  solution  we 
must  look,  not  so  much  to  the  present  situation  as  to  future 
conditions  and  the  ultimate  consequences  of  the  plan  that 
finally  shall  be  adopted. 

With  the  rise  of  industrial  education  new  meaning  has 
been  given  to  industry  and  new  dignity  to  that  kind  of 
labor  which  is  a  necessary  part  of  a  logical  plan  looking  to  the 
accomplishment  of  definite  ends,  all  of  which  adds  to  the 
significance  of  this  form  of  education  and  still  further 
augments  the  demand,  until  our  whole  scheme  of  education 
is  on  the  point  of  revision. 

Some  good  people,  conservative  to  a  fault,  look  upon 
these  educational  innovations  with  extreme  disapproval, 
marking,  as  they  believe,  the  passing  of  old-time  high 


INTRODUCTION  7 

standards  of  the  educated  man.  Others,  noting  the  im- 
mediate and  direct  value  of  technical  instruction,  are  ready 
to  jettison  the  ship  and  cast  overboard  as  useless  junk  not 
only  every  ancient  language  because  it  is  "  dead,"  but  any 
and  every  other  subject  that  does  not  clearly  and  directly 
contribute  to  utilitarian  ends,  on  the  ground  that  it  is  not 
practical.  As  the  one  side  pursues  its  educational  ideals, 
oblivious  that  men  are  beings  of  flesh  and  blood  to  be  fed, 
clothed,  and  housed,  so  the  other  forgets  that  the  chief  end 
of  man  is  not  merely  to  meet  his  physical  necessities. 
Both  sides  are  likely  to  consider  only  the  present  good  of 
the  individual  and  overlook  the  ultimate  effect  of  an  educa- 
tional system  upon  the  community  as  a  whole. 

Where,  now,  between  these  two  extremes  shall  we  find 
the  golden  mean,  by  observing  which  we  shall  have  a  new 
philosophy  of  education  adequate  to  minister  to  all  the 
needs  of  man  ?  What  is  the  fountain  at  which  all  may 
drink  freely,  to  the  advantage  not  only  of  the  individual 
but  of  the  race  ?  To  answer  this  question  safely  will 
require  the  keenest  insight  into  present  conditions  and  the 
most  prophetic  vision  as  to  future  consequences  of  what- 
ever policy  shall  be  adopted. 

The  following  pages  are  offered  as  some  slight  contri- 
bution to  the  thought  that  must  be  bestowed  upon  the 
matter  before  the  problem  of  universal  education  shall  be 
so  solved  as  to  serve  fairly  and  safely  both  the  five  and  the 
ninety-five  per  cent. 


PART  I 


I 


CHAPTER   I 

EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY^ 

It  is  dangerous  to  attempt  to  educate  a  live  boy 
with  no  reference  to  the  vocational. 

The  first  general  principle  to  be  recognized  is  this : 
That  industrial  education  cannot  be  considered  by  itself 
alone  any  more  than  industrial  people  can  live  alone.  It 
is  at  best  but  part  of  a  general  scheme  of  education  that 
aims  at  a  higher  efficiency  of  all  classes  of  people,  and  it 
is  in  this  light  that  industrial  education  should  be  studied 
and  its  problems  solved. 

The  most  significant  educational  fact  to-day  is  that  men 
of  all  classes  have  come  to  look  upon  education  as  a  thing 
that  will  better  their  condition ;  and  they  mean  by  that,  first 
of  all,  something  to  make  their  labor  more  effective  and 
more  profitable ;  and  second,  they  mean  something  that 
will  enable  them  to  live  fuller  lives.  They  have  no  very 
clear  idea  of  the  methods  for  bringing  it  all  about,  nor  have 
they  any  very  good  means  of  impressing  their  views  and 
desires  upon  us  at  educational  conventions ;  but  to  better 
their  condition  through  education  is  the  abiding  faith  and 
purpose  of  all  men  every  where,  and  they  will  persist  until 
it  is  realized. 

The  ruling  passion  of  the  race  to-day  is  for  education ; 
and  colleges  and  schools  of  all  sorts,  both  public  and  private, 

*This  chapter  covers  the  general  line  of  thought  developed  by  the  author  in  an  address  at 
the  dedication  of  the  new  agricultural  building  at  the  University  of  Tennessee,  Knoxville, 
May  38,  X909. 

II 


12  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

day  classes  and  night  classes,  winter  and  summer,  are  filled 
to  overflowing.  The  only  educational  institution  that  is 
being  deserted  is  the  old-time  district  school,  and  that  is 
failing  only  where  it  is  unable  to  satisfy  the  new  demands, 
and  where  this  occurs  its  lineal  successor  is  the  public  high 
school,  which  is  everywhere  becoming  the  favorite  agency 
of  modern  education  of  the  masses  in  America. 

The  training  of  the  young  for  the  duties  of  life  is  no 
longer  left  to  the  charity  of  the  church  nor  to  private  endow- 
ment, however  munificent.  We  do  not  ask  a  man  to  pay 
the  expense  of  his  own  education,  and  we  no  longer  require 
the  parent  to  pay  for  the  schooling  of  his  child.  We  have 
come  to  recognize  that  in  the  last  analysis  the  child  belongs 
to  the  community,  and  public  welfare  requires  that  he  be 
educated.  So  we  have  the  poUcy  of  universal  education 
well  established  among  us  and  the  largest  item  of  public  as 
well  as  of  private  expense  is  for  schools. 

Now  this  is  not  sentiment,  it  is  business ;  it  is  not  charity, 
it  is  statesmanship.  We  propose  to  maintain  all  sorts  of 
education  for  all  sorts  of  people,  and  to  keep  them  in  school 
as  long  as  we  can  —  so  far  have  we  gone  already  in  this 
worship  of  the  idol  of  our  day  and  time. 

Yes,  truly  the  ruling  passion  of  the  race  is  for  education. 
Individuals  would  amass  wealth ;  individuals  would  exert 
influence  and  power ;  individuals  would  live  lives  of  luxury 
and  ease,  but  the  common  purpose  of  the  masses  of  men 
from  all  the  walks  of  life  is  a  set  determination  to  acquire 
knowledge.  Daughters  of  washerwomen  graduate  from 
the  high  school,  and  ditchers'  sons  go  to  college  —  not  by 
ones  and  twos,  but  literally  by  hundreds  and  thousands, 
and  if  the  ruling  passion  fails  in  individual  cases,  we  have  a 
law  that  puts  the  child  into  school,  willy-nilly,  on  the  ground 
that  to  this  extent,  at  least,  he  is  public  property. 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY  13 

Now  what  is  to  be  the  consequence  of  all  this  ?  What 
will  the  daughter  of  the  washerwoman  do  after  she  has 
graduated  from  the  high  school  ?  Will  she  take  her  mother's 
place  at  the  tub?  What  think  you?  If  not,  how  will 
the  washing  be  done  ?  and  was  her  schooling  a  blessing  or 
a  curse  to  the  community  ?  —  because  the  tub  must  stay ;  and 
if  she  does  take  her  place  at  the  tub,  was  her  schooling  a 
blessing  or  a  curse  to  her  ?  Will  the  ditcher's  son  inherit 
the  father's  spade  ?  and  if  not,  how  will  ditches  be  dug  if  all 
men  are  to  be  educated  ?  How  will  the  world's  work  get 
done  if  education  takes  men  and  women  out  of  useful  and 
needful  occupations  and  makes  them  over  into  pseudo  ladies 
and  gentlemen  of  leisure  ?  How,  too,  will  their  own  bills 
be  paid  except  they  labor  as  men  have  always  labored? 
It  is  idle  to  say  that  a  portion  of  the  race  should  be  left 
ignorant  that  they  may  perform  the  undesirable  though 
necessary  labor.  The  "portion"  objects,  and  what  are  we 
going  to  do  about  it?  Now  these  are  disagreeable  ques- 
tions, and  we  would  rather  not  be  forced  to  answer  them ; 
but  they  are  fundamental,  and  will  soon  begin  to  answer 
themselves  in  some  fashion  under  our  system  of  education, 
which  is  rapidly  becoming  universal. 

We  are  now  engaged  in  the  most  stupendous  educational, 
social,  and  economic  experiment  the  world  has  ever  under- 
taken —  the  experiment  of  universal  education ;  and  whether 
in  the  end  universal  education  shall  prove  a  blessing  or  a 
curse  to  us  will  depend  entirely  upon  our  skill  in  handling 
the  issues  it  has  raised  for  our  solution.  We  have  entered 
too  far  upon  this  experiment  ever  to  retire  from  it,  even  if 
we  desired  to  do  so,  which  we  do  not ;  and  if  the  outcome 
is  to  be  safety  and  not  anarchy,  and  if  it  is  all  to  result  in 
further  development  of  the  race  and  not  in  retrogression, 
then  a  few  fundamentals  must  soon  be  clearly  recognized 


14  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

and  brought  into  and  made  a  part  of  our  educational  ideals, 
policies,  and  methods. 

First,  if  we  are  to  have  universal  education,  it  must 
contain  a  large  element  of  the  vocational,  because  all  the 
needful  activities  must  be  maintained  in  the  educated  state 
as  heretofore.  The  race  cannot  progress  any  more  in  the 
future  than  in  the  past  except  by  the  expenditure  of  large 
amounts  of  human  energy.  This  being  so,  education  can- 
not be  looked  upon  as  an  avenue  to  a  life  of  ease,  or  as  a 
means  of  giving  one  man  an  advantage  over  another, 
whereby  he  may  exist  upon  the  fruit  of  that  other's  labor 
and  the  sweat  of  that  other's  brow.  It  might  do  for  a 
few ;  it  cannot  do  for  the  mass,  whose  efficiency  must  be 
increased  and  not  decreased  by  education ;  because  in  the 
last  analysis  education  is  a  public  as  well  as  a  personal 
matter,  and  the  interests  of  the  state  require  that  the  ratio 
of  individual  efficiency  in  all  lines  shall  be  constantly 
increased. 

Second,  within  the  limits  of  needful  activities  one  occu- 
pation is  as  important  as  another,  and  a  system  of  uni- 
versal education  must  enrich  them  all,  or  the  end  will  be 
disastrous.  We  need  to  change  our  views  concerning 
what  have  been  regarded  as  menial  employments.  In  the 
millennium  no  woman  will  make  her  living  over  the  wash- 
tub,  nor  will  she  sing  the  song  of  the  shirt  day  and  night 
forever ;  but  neither  will  education  and  elevation  free  her, 
or  any  one  else,  from  a  fair  share  of  the  drudgery  of  life, 
because  the  needful  things  must  still  be  done.  Nor  must 
we  fail  to  remind  ourselves  that  not  all  the  labor  of  the 
world  is  at  the  washtub,  or  at  the  bottom  of  the  ditch, 
because  success  in  any  calling  is  the  price  of  unremitting 
and  exhausting  toil,  against  which  education  is  no  insur- 
ance whatever.     It  can  only  promise  that  faithful  labor 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY  15 

shall  have  its  adequate  and  sure  reward.  And  that  is 
enough,  for  no  man  has  a  right  to  ask  that  he  be  freed 
from  labor  on  this  earth ;  he  can  only  pray  to  be  relieved 
from  the  burden  of  aimless  and  fruitless  drudgery  —  which 
is  the  blessed  assurance  of  education. 

While  education  is  no  relief  from  labor,  or  even  drudg- 
ery, it  ought,  however,  to  lessen  the  totality  of  drudgery  by 
the  further  utilization  of  mechanical  energy  and  the  more 
economic  and  intelligent  direction  of  human  effort.  Edu- 
cation will  never  fully  justify  itself  until  this  shall  have 
been  accomplished  and  the  human  machine  be  liberated 
from  the  last  form  of  slavery  —  the  drudgery  that  is  born 
of  ignorance. 

No  man,  then,  educated  or  uneducated,  has  a  right  to  be 
useless.  Most  men  will  continue  to  earn  and  ought  to 
earn,  in  one  way  or  another,  the  funds  to  pay  their  bills, 
and  in  this  natural  way  will  the  world's  work  get  done  in 
the  future  as  in  the  past.  The  education  of  all  men,  there- 
fore, is,  or  should  be,  in  a  broad  sense  vocational,  and  the 
so-called  learned  professions  are  but  other  names  for  devel- 
oped industries.  In  this  broad  sense  every  useful  activity 
is  included,  from  farming  to  music  and  painting,  poetry 
and  sculpture  ;  from  engineering  to  medicine  and  law, 
philosophy  and  theology ;  as  wide  and  as  varied  as  the  ac- 
tivities and  capacities  of  the  human  race  —  so  wide  and  so 
varied  must  our  education  be  if  it  is  to  be  universal  and  be 
safe. 

Measured  by  this  standard,  farming  has  the  same  claims 
upon  education  as  have  language  and  literature,  but  no 
more ;  for  both  are  useful,  or  lAay  be,  though  in  different 
ways.  Which  is  more  useful  we  cannot  tell  any  more  than 
we  can  tell  whether  food  or  religion  is  the  more  essential 
to  human  life ;  or  whether  art  or  industry  contributes  most 


i6  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

to  its  fullest  development.  We  only  know  that  all  things 
within  the  range  of  human  capacity  are  useful,  and  that 
education  may,  if  it  will,  enrich  them  all. 

Now  this  demand  is  right,  for,  unless  universal  education 
can  be  so  administered  as  not  greatly  to  disturb  the  rela- 
tions of  needful  activities,  it  will  prove  in  the  end  a  curse 
instead  of  a  blessing,  and  it  is  the  business  of  educators 
now  soberly  to  consider  the  consequences  of  headlong  poli- 
cies, however  promising  in  direct  results,  if  they  do  not 
reckon  with  the  inevitable  outcome. 

Thirdy  in  the  working  out  of  these  plans  such  policies 
and  methods  must  be  observed  as  shall  prevent  social 
cleavage  along  vocational  lines.  Unless  we  can  do  this, 
democracy  will,  in  the  end,  fail.  We  cannot  go  on  with 
one  half  of  the  people  educated  and  the  other  half  igno- 
rant, any  more  than  we  could  live  with  one  half  free  and 
the  other  half  slave.  No  more  can  we  live  with  one  half 
educated  to  one  set  of  ideals  and  the  other  half  to  an- 
other. If  we  attempt  it,  we  shall  have,  in  due  time,  not 
civilization  —  but  a  tug  of  war  between  highly  educated 
but  mutually  destructive  human  energies.  The  only  safety 
for  us  now  is  in  the  education  of  all  classes  to  common 
ideals  of  individual  efficiency  and  public  service  along 
needful  lines  and  with  common  standards  of  citizenship. 
To  this  end  the  individual  must  have  training,  both  voca- 
tional and  humanistic,  and  it  is  better  if  he  does  not  know 
just  when  or  how  he  is  getting  either  the  one  or  the  other. 

Fourthy  remembering  that  what  is  one  man's  vocation  is 
another's  avocation,  and  that  what  is  technical  and  profes- 
sional to  one  is  humanistic  to  another ;  rememberitig  that 
all  study  is  educational  and  that  utility  does  not  lessen  its 
value  ;  remembering,  too,  that  much  of  our  education  comes 
from  association  and  that  the  best  of  it  comes  in  no  other 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY  17 

way  —  remembering  all  these  and  many  other  considera- 
tions well  known  to  the  thinking  man,  we  must  agree  that 
in  a  system  of  universal  education  the  best  results  will  al- 
ways follow  when  as  many  subjects  as  possible  and  as  many 
vocations  as  may  be  are  taught  together  in  the  same  school, 
under  the  same  management  and  to  the  same  body  of  men. 
In  no  other  way  can  a  perfectly  homogeneous  population 
be  secured.  In  no  other  way  can  universal  efficiency  be  so 
closely  combined  with  good  citizenship.  In  no  other  way 
can  activity  and  learning  be  so  intimately  united.  In  no 
other  way  can  morals  and  good  government  be  so  safely 
intrusted  to  a  free  people. 

As  I  see  it,  the  greatest  hindrance  to  the  natural  evolu- 
tion of  a  single  system  of  schools  adapted  to  the  education 
of  all  classes  of  our  people  is  academic  tradition  which 
needs  substantial  modification  in  a  number  of  important 
particulars. 

The  truth  is,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  "  general  edu- 
cation," except  one  that  fits  for  nothing  in  particular,  leav- 
ing the  possessor  stranded  without  occupation  or  other 
field  for  the  exercise  of  his  trained  activities.  In  so  far  as 
this  type  of  general  education  exists  among  us,  the  quicker 
we  abolish  it  the  better.  For  example,  it  has  been  fash- 
ionable to  speak  of  the  courses  in  the  arts  and  sciences  as 
"general,"  "non-technical,,"  or  "liberal,"  using  the  terms 
synonymously,  and  as  opposed  to  the  technical  or  profes- 
sional. 

Now  this  is  inaccurate  and  leads  to  much  confusion  of 
mind.  Courses  in  the  arts  and  sciences  are  not  by  nature 
general  and  non-technical,  because  an  examination  of  the 
facts  will  discover  that  most  of  the  students  taking  those 
courses  in  colleges  are  taking  them  for  professional 
purposes   in  preparation   for  definite   careers,    generally 


l8  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

teaching  ;  possibly  banking,  railroad  administration,  or  the 
business  of  an  analytical  or  manufacturing  chemist  or  some 
other  gainful  occupation.  That  is  to  say,  the  courses  in 
the  arts  and  sciences  are  mostly  taken  as  professional  or 
vocational  courses  the  same  as  are  those  in  engineering 
and  agriculture. 

The  best  evidence  of  this  erroneous  use  of  terms  is  that 
those  who  make  most  of  the  distinction  between  the  tech- 
nical and  the  non-technical  courses ;  those  who  talk  most 
about  the  latter  being  liberal  as  distinct  from  the  former; 
those  who  outcry  loudest  against  commercializing  educa- 
tion are  teachers  themselves,  who  are  earning  money 
like  farmers.  Now  by  what  rule  do  we  adjudge  that  farm- 
ing is  a  calling  and  teaching  a  profession  ?  that  engineer- 
ing is  industrial  and  journalism  liberal  ?  that  courses  fitting 
for  farming  are  technical  and  narrow,  and  those  fitting  for 
teaching  or  making  chemical  determinations  are  general 
and  Uberal  ?  The  truth  is  they  are  all  alike  vocational ; 
they  are  all  professional ;  they  all  open  avenues  whereby 
men  and  women  earn  money  to  pay  their  bills,  and  ninety- 
nine  out  of  a  hundred  of  those  who  are  good  for  anything 
in  any  and  all  these  courses  are  taking  them  for  the 
same  purpose,  viz.  to  afford  a  congenial  field  of  activity 
whereby  the  individual  may  become  a  worthy  and  self-sus- 
taining member  of  society. 

The  truth  is  that  the  distinction  between  the  technical 
and  the  non-technical,  the  professional  and  the  non -pro- 
fessional, the  narrow  and  the  liberal,  does  not  inhere  in 
courses  of  study  leading  to  graduation,  for  the  same  sub- 
ject may  be  either  the  one  or  the  other  according  to  the 
point  of  view  of  the  student  and  the  purpose  for  which  it 
is  taken.  For  example,  chemistry  per  se  is  neither  techni- 
cal nor  non-technical,  narrow  nor  liberal.     It  is  a  great 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY  19 

field  of  science.  As  explored  and  studied  by  an  agricul- 
tural student,  or  by  one  who  proposes  to  make  his  living 
as  an  analytical  or  a  manufacturing  chemist  —  to  them  it 
is  a  technical  subject,  while  to  the  student  of  literature 
it  becomes  a  non-technical  and  therefore  a  liberal  subject, 
because  it  liberalizes  him  and  broadens  his  outlook  upon 
the  world  and  helps  to  connect  him  with  the  farmer  and 
manufacturing  chemist.  To  the  prospective  teacher  it 
becomes  technical  or  non-technical ;  vocational  or  non- 
vocational,  according  as  he  proposes  or  does  not  propose 
to  teach  it.  To  the  farmer,  chemistry  is  a  technical  sub- 
ject, and  literature  and  history  non-technical,  and  therefore 
liberal.  To  the  teacher  of  history,  conditions  would  be 
reversed. 

Another  academic  reform  is  to  get  over  our  horror  of 
the  vocational.  The  old-line  courses  were  as  distinctly 
vocational  to  the  learned  professions  as  are  the  newer 
courses  to  the  industrial  occupations.  The  services  of 
education  to  the  industries  of  life  and  the  ordinary  oc- 
cupations of  men  have  been  so  recent  that  final  adjust- 
ments are  not  yet  made.  We  are  only  gradually  beginning 
to  learn  that  every  useful  man,  educated  or  uneducated, 
has  a  calling  and  that  the  line  between  the  technical  and 
the  non-technical,  between  the  narrow  and  the  liberal,  runs 
across  individuals,  not  between  them.  Every  properly  edti- 
cated  man  is  trained  both  vocationally  and  liberally^  but  one 
vocation  is  not  necessarily  more  liberal  than  another  ex- 
cept as  the  practitioner  makes  it  so.  To  succeed  in  any 
calling  requires  the  possession  of  a  body  of  specific  knowl- 
edge relating  directly  to  that  calling,  mostly  useless  profes- 
sionally to  one  of  another  calling,  but  far  from  useless  as  a 
liberalizer. 

Every  man,  to  be  efficient,  needs  the  vocational ;    to  be 


20  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

happy  and  safe  he  needs  the  other.  John  Bessmer  was  a 
barber  and  made  his  Hving  by  his  scissors,  but  meteorology 
was  his  avocation.  He  was  the  best  barber  I  ever  knew, 
but  he  talked  most  about  meteorology.  The  ditcher  will 
not  ditch  all  his  waking  hours.  What  will  he  think  about 
when  he  is  awake  and  not  in  the  ditch  ?  Then  is  when  his 
avocation,  the  liberal  part  of  his  education,  is  his  comfort 
and  our  safety,  for  the  mind  is  an  unruly  member,  and  if 
the  man  has  no  training  beyond  his  vocation,  his  intellect 
is  at  sea,  without  chart,  compass,  or  rudder,  and  the  human 
mind  adrift  is  a  dangerous  engine  of  destruction. 

It  is  well  that  we  who  are  bent  most  upon  industrial 
training  and  development  do  not  forget  these  considera- 
tions, and  in  our  enthusiasm  for  technical  instruction  we 
see  to  it  also  that  every  individual  has  a  fair  share  of  the 
liberal  as  well,  for  the  chief  distinction  of  the  educated 
man  is,  after  all,  his  ability  to  view  the  world  from  a  stand- 
point broader  than  his  own  surroundings. 

Another  reUc  of  academic  ancient  history  that  ought  to 
be  eUminated  is  that  habit  of  thought  which  runs  in  the 
form  of  set  courses  of  study  four  years  long.  This  habit 
of  thought  has  stood  in  the  way  of  the  proper  and  ade- 
quate development  of  agriculture  in  our  colleges,  and  it  is 
now  standing  in  the  way  of  high-school  differentiation  and 
the  development  of  industrial  courses  therein. 

For  example,  it  has  been  assumed  without  discussion 
that  a  student  desiring  instruction  in  agriculture  must  enter 
upon  a  set  course  for  four  years,  and  that  unless  he  gradu- 
ated he  had  somehow  failed,  or  the  course  was  too  long. 
It  never  seemed  to  occur  to  our  educational  fathers  and 
grandfathers  that  perhaps  the  course  was  not  adapted  to 
his  needs  any  more  than  it  seems  to  occur  to  some  of  our 
contemporaries  that  men  go  to  school  to  study  subjects^  not 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY  21 

set  courses,  and  that  the  benefits  of  our  instruction  are  by- 
no  means  confined  to  those  who  graduate. 

There  is  nothing  sacred  about  four  years,  or  about  a 
particular  association  of  subjects.  We  must  get  over  our 
fetish  worship  of  what  we  call  a  "  course  of  study  "  and 
bestow  our  attention  upon  "  courses  of  instruction."  Our 
somewhat  uniform  failure  to  do  this  has  been  responsible 
for  much  special  and  unnecessary  limitation  in  the  subject 
of  agriculture.  Let  me  illustrate :  A  good  friend  some 
months  ago  asked  me  this  question :  "  Why  do  you  not 
have  a  two-years  course  in  agriculture  in  the  University 
of  Illinois  }  "  I  replied  by  asking,  "  Tell  me  first  why  do 
you  have  one  in  your  university  } "  He  replied,  "  Because 
many  young  men  cannot,  or  will  not  stay,  for  a  four-years 
course."  And  I  said,  "  Then  of  course  you  have  also  two- 
year  courses  in  the  arts  and  sciences,  and  in  engineering  } " 
And  he  said  with  an  elevation  of  the  eyebrows,  very  signifi- 
cant, "  No,  of  course  not."  Then  I  said,  "  Why  not }  Do 
all  or  most  of  your  students  in  the  other  colleges  remain 
and  complete  four-year  courses } "  He  had  to  answer, 
**  No,  not  a  third  of  them."  I  think  I  had  answered  his 
question,  but  to  make  sure  I  said,  "When  the  other  col- 
leges of  the  University  of  Illinois  find  it  necessary  or  desir- 
able to  put  in  two-year  courses  because  not  more  than  one 
student  in  three  or  four  stays  to  graduate,  then  I  suppose 
we  shall  do  the  same ;  but  until  then  I  think  we  shall 
continue  to  teach  subjects  to  those  who  come,  and  bestow 
honors  on  those  who  have  earned  the  usual  amount  of 
credit."  Here  is  a  good  illustration  of  our  futile  efforts 
to  hammer  a  new  subject  into  line  with  ancient  academic 
custom,  as  if  graduation  from  something,  even  a  two-years 
course,  were  the  chief  end  of  the  schooling  process- 

This  same  old  habit  of  thought  is  the  bane  of  the  high 


22  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

schools  to-day  in  their  effort  to  serve  the  people.  Many 
of  them  consider  the  limit  reached  when  a  four-years 
course  is  offered,  made  up  largely  out  of  old-line  subjects 
with  little  or  no  reference  to  local  needs,  and  when  we  talk 
about  instruction  in  vocational  subjects  they  remind  us  that 
the  "course  is  full."  This  mistaken  attitude  on  the  part 
of  too  many  high  school  men  will  do  more  than  all  other 
causes  combined  to  force  upon  us  a  multitude  of  separate 
technical  schools  and  destroy  the  opportunity  of  the  high 
schools  forever,  because  men  are  as  firmly  bent  on  voca- 
tional education  of  a  secondary  grade  to-day  as  their  fathers 
were  bent  on  industrial  education  of  collegiate  grade  half 
a  century  ago.  The  same  forces  are  at  work  in  high 
schools  now  as  were  at  work  among  colleges  then,  and  the 
issue  will  be  the  same.  Either  the  high  schools  will  ex- 
pand and  teach  the  vocational,  or  other  schools  will  be 
established  that  will  do  it. 

One  good  friend  whom  I  greatly  honor,  because  he  is  many 
years  my  senior,  and  many  degrees  my  superior  in  every 
sense,  writing  me  on  this  point,  said  in  substance :  "  Your 
idea  that  all  subjects  needful  to  the  life  of  the  community 
should  be  taught  in  the  same  school  is  fine  in  theory,  but 
how  are  you  going  to  get  it  all  into  the  course,  and  what 
shall  be  left  out?  "  Aye,  there's  the  rub !  How  get  it  into 
the  course  and  what  shall  be  left  out  ?  How  this  instinctive 
attitude  of  mind  clings  to  us  academic  people !  It  is  not 
much  found  except  among  professional  educators,  and  with 
them  it  is  one  of  the  relics  of  academic  ancient  history, 
dating  back  to  the  time  when  the  college  provided  a  set 
course  for  all  students  and  which,  when  full,  was/?///  in  the 
same  sense  that  the  jug  is  full. 

Recently  the  colleges  have  learned  the  lesson  of  the  tre- 
mendous complexity  of  modem  demands,  and  they  are  be- 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY  23 

ginning  to  realize  something  of  the  depth  and  breadth  of  the 
meaning  of  universal  education  ;  at  least  that  it  means  the 
education  of  many  men  for  many  things  and  by  means  of 
various  materials  and  methods.  This  involves  many  courses 
in  one  school.  It  requires  that  colleges  teach  subjects  rather 
than  set  courses ;  and  nothing  is  full  so  long  as  any  branch 
of  knowledge  and  activity  remains  undeveloped  and  men 
and  money  hold  out.  The  colleges  have  learned  this ;  it 
is  also  the  lesson  for  the  secondary  schools ;  indeed,  in  a 
very  large  sense  the  land-grant  university  is  the  model  for 
the  public  high  school. 

Our  children  look  to  the  schools  to  fit  them  for  the 
many  duties  of  life.  Let  them  not  be  disappointed.  To 
this  end  we  must  construct  such  educational  policies  and 
employ  such  materials  and  methods  as  shall  make  the 
school  a  true  picture  of  life  outside  in  all  its  essential  ac- 
tivities. To  accomplish  this  we  must  introduce  vocational 
studies  freely,  not  for  their  pedagogic  influence  but  for 
their  own  sake  and  for  the  professional  skill,  and  creative 
energy  they  will  give  the  learner.  We  must  do  this,  too, 
without  excluding  the  non-professional  either  from  the 
school  or  from  the  individual. 

Take  a  specific  instance  outside  of  agriculture,  but  one 
which  is  typical  of  thousands  of  cases.  There  are  many 
good  families  whose  daughters  feel  the  need  of  earning  some 
little  money  during  years  of  young  womanhood  between 
the  school  age  and  matrimony.  They  are  good  typical 
American  girls,  worthy  the  love  and  the  service  of  any  man, 
and  sometime  the  hero  will  come.     In  the  meantime,  what  ? 

We  will  suppose  that  the  girl  in  question  looks  with 
favor  upon  stenography  and  typewriting  as  a  congenial 
employment.  Now  I  put  the  question  flatly,  remembering 
there  are  many  like  her  in  the  same  community,  —  shall 


24  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

the  high  school  put  in  courses  of  typewriting  and  stenogra* 
phy  which  she  may  take  in  connection  with  her  humanistic 
studies  and  her  domestic  science  which  she  will  one  day 
need?  —  for  this  typical  girl  is,  or  should  be,  a  prospective 
wife  and  mother.  Will  the  school  do  this  ?  or  will  it  force 
her  to  leave  her  high  school  in  order  to  get  elsewhere 
this  vocational  training  which  she  thinks  she  must  have, 
because  of  temporary  needs,  and  which  the  high  school 
will  not  give  her  lest  it  should  be  suspected  of  commercial- 
izing education  ? 

I  am  thankful  that  many  high  schools  are  already  put- 
ting in  vocational  courses.  May  their  numbers  increase. 
It  is  far  better  to  hold  this  girl  in  the  high  school  and  teach 
her  also  the  things  she  will  one  day  need  much  more  than 
she  will  then  need  her  stenography  and  typewriting,  —  it  is 
better  for  her  and  it  is  better  for  the  community  than  it  is 
to  force  her,  in  early  years  and  under  the  exigency  of  im- 
mediate needs,  to  abandon  the  greater  for  the  less.  Yes,  it 
is  better  to  take  stenography  and  typewriting,  telegraphy 
and  bookkeeping  into  the  high  school  than  it  is  to  drive 
our  girls  out  of  it  even  into  the  night  schools.  A  proper 
policy  at  this  point  will  save  to  American  wifehood  and 
American  homes  thousands  of  bachelor  maids  and  factory 
girls,  and  do  more  to  reduce  the  ratio  of  divorce  than  any 
other  civilizing  force  with  which  we  hold  acquaintance. 

What  is  true  of  many  girls  is  doubly  true  of  most  boys. 
If  they  are  good  for  anything,  the  impulse  to  be  doing 
something  definite  takes  hold  of  them  early,  and  the  only 
way  to  keep  a  live  boy  in  school  or  to  make  him  good  for 
anything  after  he  leaves  it  is  to  be  certain  that  some  portion 
of  his  curriculum  relates  directly  to  some  form  of  business 
activity  outside.  //  is  dangerous  to  attempt  to  educate  a  live 
boy  with  no  reference  to  the  vocational. 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY  25 

The  trouble  has  been  in  the  past,  and  is  yet,  that  our 
courses  of  instruction  have  been  too  few.  We  have  not 
sufficiently  distinguished  between  what  a  single  individual 
could  take  and  what  the  community  as  a  whole  ought  to 
know.  Accordingly,  men  seeking  education  have  found 
much  of  the  subject-matter  and  of  the  method  grossly  un- 
suited  to  the  uses  they  hoped  to  make  of  it,  and  have  either 
left  the  school,  sacrificing  their  broader  opportunity,  or 
have  stayed  to  the  sacrifice  of  their  efficiency. 

The  universities  have  been  first  to  recognize  this  fact  and 
to  meet  it.  With  the  best  of  them  there  is  no  thought  of 
a  set  course  which  every  individual  must  take,  but  rather 
the  ain^is  to  offer  instruction  in  as  many  as  possible  of 
the  branches  of  knowledge  that  interest  and  profit  men. 
The  result  is  that  in  these  institutions  few  men  are  taking 
courses  with  a  fixed  sequence,  but  each  is  after  the  instruc- 
tion which  will  best  fit  his  needs,  and  often  two  men  take 
the  same  subject  side  by  side  with  a  very  different  purpose 
and  from  a  very  different  point  of  view. 

Now  the  efficiency  of  modern  university  education,  espe- 
cially along  new  lines,  is  becoming  notable,  and  institutions 
conducted  upon  this  plan  are  overrun  with  students  seeking 
definite  instruction  for  definite  purposes,  all  of  which  indi- 
cates the  educational  policy  that  best  meets  the  needs  of 
the  people.  Here  is  the  cue  to  the  general  plan  that 
should  characterize  the  high  schools,  upon  which  educators 
ought  to  bestow  some  degree  of  special  attention,  because 
it  is  in  the  secondary  schools  and  not  in  the  colleges  that 
the  American  people  will  mostly  be  educated. 

A  third  particular  in  which  we  need  academic  reforma- 
tion is  this:  Not  only  college  courses,  but  high  school 
courses,  as  well,  are  planned  and  conducted  almost  solely 
in  the  interest  of  the  few  who  graduate,  with  but  little  ref - 


26  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

erence  to  the  masses  who  drop  by  the  wayside.  If  our 
system  of  education  is  to  achieve  the  highest  results,  it 
must  recognize  the  natural  difference  in  men,  both  qualita- 
tively and  quantitatively,  and  while  it  trains  the  brightest 
and  best  for  the  positions  of  most  responsibility  and  there- 
fore of  honor,  it  must  so  shape  its  policy  that  those  who 
for  any  reason  cannot,  or  do  not,  remain  to  the  limit  of  time, 
or  whose  academic  ability  is  mediocre  shall  drop  naturally 
into  useful  places  for  which  their  little  schooling  has  some- 
what definitely  prepared  them.  Thus  will  our  human 
flotsam  and  jetsam  be  lessened,  and  thus  shall  we  become 
more  homogeneous  as  a  people.  Thus  too  shall  we  be 
consistent,  for  does  not  our  education  aim  to  be  universal  ? 

Our  high  schools,  or  rather  their  constituency,  are  suf- 
fering cruelly  at  this  point  to-day.  The  chief  object  in  too 
many  ambitious  schools  is  to  get  on  the  accredited  list  of 
as  many  universities  as  possible,  graduate  as  many  students 
as  may  be,  and  get  them  into  college.  So  intense  is  this 
purpose  that  in  too  many  instances  the  course  of  study  and 
the  methods  of  work  are  inadvertently  but  largely  shaped 
in  the  interest  of  those  who  are  to  graduate,  though  we 
know  only  too  well  that  their  ratio  is  small,  and  that  of 
those  who  go  to  college  it  is  still  smaller. 

It  is  time  the  high  schools  served  the  interests  of  their 
community  first  of  all ;  and  if  they  will  do  that  thoroughly, 
the  colleges  will  manage  to  connect  with  them  on  some 
terms  mutually  satisfactory.  If  that  is  impossible,  then  let 
the  high  school  faithfully  discharge  its  natural  functions  to 
the  community  that  gives  it  life  and  support,  and  leave 
adjustments  to  the  universities.  The  few  who  go  beyond 
the  high  school  will  be  abundantly  able  to  take  care  of 
themselves  if  only  their  training  has  been  thorough^  and 
they  have  learned  habits  of  efficiency.     I  protest  against 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY  27 

the  reduction  of  the  American  high  school  to  the  basis  of 
a  college  preparatory  school,  unless  it  is  first  built  upon 
what  is  a  rational  education  for  the  masses  of  men.  We 
have  no  right  to  reduce,  impoverish,  or  distort  the  educa- 
tional opportunity  of  the  great  mass  of  people  who  depend, 
upon  the  high  school  for  their  only  education,  in  the 
interest  of  the  few  who  go  to  college. 

We  are  nearing  the  time  when  for  various  reasons  we  shall 
revolutionize  our  secondary  education  as  we  have  already 
revolutionized  our  college  standards.  We  shall  offer  many 
courses  of  instruction  in  many  subjects,  some  vocational, 
others  not;  some  vocational  to  certain  students,  not  so  to 
others,  and  all  in  the  same  school.  We  shall  not  be  on 
sound  ground  in  this  matter  until  things  are  so  fixed  that 
when  a  boy  or  a  girl  comes  into  contact  with  our  school 
system  at  any  point,  even  for  a  short  time,  he  or  she  will 
at  once  and  of  necessity  strike  something  vocational  and 
also  something  not  vocational;  to  the  end  that,  however 
soon  the  student  leaves  the  system,  he  will  carry  out  into 
life  at  least  something  which  will  make  him  more  efficient 
at  some  point,  and  also  more  cultivated,  because  the  schools 
have  taught  him  something  of  actual  life,  not  only  in  the 
abstract  but  in  its  application. 

The  greatest  trouble  with  our  educational  system  to-day 
is  that  it  is  laid  out  too  much  on  the  plan  of  a  trunk  line 
railroad  without  side  switches  or  way  stations,  but  with 
splendid  terminal  facilities,  so  that  we  send  the  educational 
trains  thundering  over  the  country,  quite  oblivious  of  the 
population  except  to  take  on  passengers,  and  these  we  take 
on  much  as  the  fast  train  takes  mail  bags  from  the  hook. 
We  do  our  utmost  to  keep  them  aboard,  to  the  end,  and  we 
work  so  exclusively  for  this  purpose  that  those  who  leave  us 
are  fitted  for  no  special  calling,  and  drop  out  for  no  special 


28  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

purpose,  but  roll  off  like  chunks  of  coal  by  the  wayside  — 
largely  a  matter  of  luck  as  to  what  becomes  of  them. 
I  would  reconstruct  the  policy  of  the  system  by  making  all 
trains  local,  both  to  take  on  and  leave  off  passengers ;  and 
I  would  pay  much  attention  to  the  sidings,  and  the  depots, 
and  their  surroundings  at  the  way  stations,  to  the  end  that 
those  who  do  not  complete  the  journey  may  find  congenial 
surroundings  and  useful  employment  in  some  calling  along 
the  Hne.  I  mean  by  this  that  while  vocation  should  be 
neither  the  end  nor  the  means  of  the  educational  process, 
yet  it  should  be  its  inseparable  concomitant.  This  is 
education  for  efficiency  and  service,  whether  it  ever  earns 
an  academic  degree  or  not. 

We  need  not  fear  real  education  for  real  efficiency,  but  we 
may  well  tremble  when  we  see  a  whole  people  gorging 
themselves  with  a  mass  of  knowledge  that  has  no  applica- 
tion to  the  lives  they  are  to  live,  for  this  will  breed  in  the 
end  dissatisfaction  and  anarchy.  The  best  illustration  of 
this  educational  short-sightedness  is  the  fondness  of  many 
a  classically  educated  colored  brother  for  Latin,  Greek,  and 
Hebrew,  not  so  much  for  what  they  can  do  for  him,  or  help 
to  do  for  himself  or  others,  as  because  the  acquisition  of 
language  is  a  pleasant  exercise  and  its  possession  a  satisfy- 
ing novelty.  Fortunately  Booker  Washington  and  Tus- 
keegee  are  in  the  land,  but  unfortunately  our  educational 
blunders  are  not  limited  to  the  colored  race.  It  is  a  notable 
and  perhaps  significant  fact  that  a  very  large  proportion 
of  the  tramps  of  the  country  have  had  the  advantages 
of  our  schools. 

Another  point  at  which  our  minds  are  in  danger  of  wan- 
dering far  afield  is  in  regard  to  the  natural  function  of  the 
secondary  school.  The  American  high  school  is  a  new 
institution,  and  like  all  new  institutions  it  lacks  ideals  and 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY  29 

methods.  It  has  displaced,  in  the  West  at  least,  the  old- 
time  academy  whose  function  it  was  to  fit  for  college. 
The  high  school,  lacking  models,  has  followed  very  largely 
and  quite  naturally  the  plan  of  the  academy  whose  mantle 
it  has  inherited.  In  this  it  has  erred.  The  modern  high 
school  is  not  the  lineal  descendant  of  the  old-time  academy ^ 
and  its  primary  function  is  not  to  fit  for  college.  It  is  a 
new  institution,  and  its  function  is  to  educate  its  natural 
and  local  constituency  for  the  duties  of  life.  It  is  as  thor- 
oughly a  public  institution  as  is  the  state  university,  and  it 
should  serve  its  community  in  the  same  way  and  with  the 
same  spirit  that  the  university  serves  the  larger  and  more 
complex  unit. 

It  is  the  first  business  of  the  high  schools  to  serve  the 
public  needs  directly  through  the  masses  of  men  and 
women  who  constitute  their  natural  constituency,  not  in- 
directly through  the  colleges.  Their  service  to  education 
and  to  civilization  is  primary,  fundamental,  and  direct,  not 
secondary  and  preparatory.  Nor  in  saying  this  do  I  re- 
flect upon  the  great  work  of  our  institutions  of  highest 
learning  ;  far  from  it.  No  man  can  exceed  me  in  admira- 
tion of  the  supreme  service  of  the  colleges  and  the  uni- 
versities of  the  country,  but  that  supreme  service  must 
be  rendered  without  overshadowing,  distorting,  or  injuring 
that  other  service,  which,  after  all,  is  more  direct,  reaches 
a  larger  number,  and  without  which  the  influences  of  the 
colleges  and  universities  will  be  largely  dissipated  and  lost. 

If  the  existing  high  schools  will  earnestly  address  them- 
selves to  this  great  duty,  they  will  become,  next  to  the 
church,  the  most  powerful  educating  and  elevating  agen- 
cies of  our  civilization ;  but  if  they  do  not,  then  as  sure  as 
time  passes  another  system  of  schools  will  arise  that  will 
do  it,  and  the  time  will  not  be  long  hence  until  they  will 


30  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

divide  the  field  with  technical  schools  and  play  a  losing 
game  of  chance  with  them.  The  first  independent  schools 
will  be  trade  schools  in  the  cities  and  agricultural  schools 
in  the  country,  and  this  lead  will  be  followed  by  others 
until  we  shall  have  a  whole  system  of  vocational  schools 
of  all  conceivable  sorts;  and  the  high  schools  will  be 
stripped,  first  of  one  opportunity  to  serve  their  constitu- 
ency and  then  of  another,  until  their  usefulness  will  be 
lessened,  if  not  entirely  destroyed  in  the  eyes  of  the  peo- 
ple, who  alone  can  support  them,  and  they  will  be  rele- 
gated to  girls'  schools  and  training  schools  for  college 
admission. 

This  is  no  fanciful  picture,  and  I  am  convinced  that 
unless  we  are  quick  to  read  and  heed  the  handwriting  on 
the  wall  to-day  the  next  decade  or  two  will  witness  the 
permanent  decline  of  the  high  school  under  the  onslaught 
of  the  multitude  of  independent  vocational  schools  that 
will  spring  up  everywhere  and  which  will  seem  to  serve 
well  because  the  service  is  direct  and  plainly  useful.  The 
only  great  future  for  the  high  school  is  to  add  vocational 
work,  making  the  separate  technical  school  unnecessary, 
if  not  impossible.  If  they  will  do  this,  their  future  and  their 
service  are  assured ;  but  if  the  people  find  it  necessary  to 
establish  another  system  of  secondary  education  as  they  did  a 
new  system  of  collegiate  grade,  then  they  will  do  it ;  but  if 
they  do,  they  will  certainly  insist  upon  a  fair  division  of  the 
revenues,  because  modern  high  schools  are  not  private 
institutions  as  were  the  old-time  colleges;  they  are  in 
every  sense  of  the  term  public  institutions. 

Experience  in  university  circles  has  shown  that  the 
separate  professional  college  was  necessary  in  the  past 
only  because  of  the  indifference  to  new  demands  of  the 
institutions  then  existing.     As  soon  however  as  the  universi- 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY  31 

ties  seriously  set  about  studying  the  new  problem  from 
their  own  standpoint  it  was  found  that  there  was  really 
nothing  incompatible  between  the  old  and  the  new  ideals, 
but  rather  that  it  took  the  two  together  to  make  a  com- 
plete system  of  education,  and  where  the  two  have  been 
already  joined,  —  the  professional  and  the  cultural,  the  in- 
dustrial and  the  humanistic, — there  has  education  flourished 
best  in  the  last  decade ;  there  is  the  educational  impulse 
strongest  to-day,  and  there,  if  wise  counsels  prevail,  will 
develop  in  good  time  the  greatest  educational  strength 
and  creative  power  of  this  most  virile  of  people ;  not  only 
along  industrial  lines,  but  along  artistic  and  humanistic 
lines  as  well. 

If  the  high  schools  make  the  most  of  their  opportunity, 
they  will  develop  into  a  great  system  capable  of  training 
the  masses  of  our  people  not  only  industrially  but  for  all 
the  duties  of  life,  and  in  a  way  that  can  never  be  equaled 
by  any  multiple  system  of  separate  vocational  schools, 
however  well  established  and  conducted.  One  school 
with  many  courses,  not  many  schools  with  different 
courses  —  that  is  the  plan  for  American  secondary  educa- 
tion. Such  a  school  would  be  large  enough  and  strong 
enough  to  afford  an  excellent  education  within  walking  or 
driving  distance  of  every  young  person  —  an  ideal  not 
attainable  by  any  system  of  separate  schools  that  can 
ever  be  established.  I  have  unlimited  faith  in  the  final 
development  of  the  high  school,  and  cannot  condemn  in 
terms  too  strong  a  pessimistic  or  a  carping  spirit  toward 
this  new  and  remarkable  system  of  education  at  the  very 
doors  of  the  people ;  and  I  cannot  oppose  too  strongly  any 
and  all  influences  that  tend  to  make  its  proper  evolution 
either  impossible  or  more  difficult. 

We  must  not  underrate  the  importance  of  the  average 


32  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

citizen,  either  to  himself  or  to  the  community,  for  the  com- 
mon man  with  an  opportunity  is  a  common  man  no  longer. 
If  we  would  know  what  a  community  of  common  people 
can  do  when  it  addresses  itself  seriously  and  en  masse  to  a 
single  purpose,  consider  the  success  of  that  little  German 
village  in  breeding  canaries,  marvel  upon  the  achievements 
in  the  Passion  Play  at  Oberammergau,  or  even  the  singing 
of  the  Messiah  in  that  little  Swedish  village  of  Kansas,  as 
described  in  a  recent  Outlook. 

Remembering  what  the  common  man  may  do,  with 
proper  ideals  and  advantages,  there  is  no  higher  duty  now 
resting  upon  all  of  us,  and  especially  upon  educators,  than 
to  unite  education  and  activity  by  the  closest  possible 
bonds,  to  prevent  on  the  one  hand  the  acquirement  of 
knowledge  to  no  purpose,  and  on  the  other  the  develop- 
ment of  operative  skill  with  little  knowledge  of  the  true 
relations  of  things ;  to  see  to  it  that  no  individual  shall  be 
compelled  to  choose  between  an  education  without  a  voca- 
tion, and  a  vocation  without  an  education.  This  supreme 
responsibility  rests  heavily  upon  every  American  commu- 
nity just  now,  and  in  our  enthusiasm  for  education  that  is 
useful  it  is  well  if  we  temper  our  enthusiasm  with  judg- 
ment and  keep  always  in  mind  the  fundamentals  on  which 
all  real  education  must  rest.  If  this  be  true,  it  is  impera- 
tive that  the  high  school  as  an  educational  institution 
should  take  hold  of  and  care  for  all  the  essential  activities 
of  its  community ;  and  if  the  clay  working  or  some  other 
interest  develop  into  a  separate  organization  with  a  sepa- 
rate plant,  that  it  still  be  under  the  control  of  the  high 
school,  as  the  different  colleges  of  a  university  are  under 
one  control,  and  their  policies  and  aims,  though  different, 
are  yet  harmonized  into  a  common  purpose  of  training  for 
actual,  not  apparent,  efficiency. 


EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY  ^^ 

To  teach  all  subjects  to  all  men  in  the  same  school —  this 
is  the  great  educational,  social,  and  economic  opportunity 
of  America,  where  both  collegiate  and  secondary  education 
are  in  the  hands  of  the  general  public  and  not  of  any  sect, 
class,  or  faction.  If  we  throw  away  this  natural  advan- 
tage, bought  with  blood  and  treasure,  or  if  we  neglect  to 
make  the  most  of  it,  we  are  guilty  before  the  nation  and 
the  race  of  a  breach  of  trust  second  only  to  the  sin  of 
treason. 

If  we  follow  precedent  blindly  and  transport  that  alien 
institution,  the  European  trade  school,  and  transplant  it 
into  the  free  soil  of  America  simply  because  it  is  tempo- 
rarily easier  than  to  complete  the  system  we  have  so  splen- 
didly begun,  then  shall  we  commit  an  educational  blunder 
that  is  inexcusable,  and  we  shall  richly  deserve  the  anathe- 
mas that  will  be  ours  from  generations  yet  unborn  when 
they  come  to  see  the  handicap  we  have  laid  upon  them  and 
the  natural  advantages  we  have  sacrificed. 

I  would  have  it  so  that  the  occupation  of  an  American 
citizen  may  not  be  known  by  his  dress,  his  manner,  his 
speech,  or  his  prejudices.  If  we  can  realize  this  ideal,  it 
will  be  to  our  perpetual  advantage,  for  it  will  insure  not 
only  our  economic  independence  but  our  social  comfort, 
our  racial  progress,  and  our  national  safety.  If  all  this  is 
to  come  about,  we  have  some  thinking  to  do  now,  for,  as  I 
have  remarked  elsewhere,  more  depends  on  what  we  do 
noWj  than  can  depend  upon  what  we  or  others  think  and 
say  and  try  to  do  twenty-five  or  fifty  years  from  now. 

When  the  materials  for  American  educational  history 
are  all  gathered,  and  when  time  enough  has  elapsed  for  its 
various  elements  to  assume  their  true  proportions  and  per- 
spective, it  will  be  found  that  the  most  significant  fact  in 
the  educational  movement  of  our  day  and  time  was  the 


34  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

agitation  that  led  up  to  the  establishment  of  the  state  uni- 
versity. 

In  a  very  large  sense  the  founding  of  that  unique  in- 
stitution of  learning  introduced  two  new  and  distinctive 
elements  into  our  philosophy  of  education,  both  of  which 
bid  fair  to  be  permanent,  and  to  control  even  to  the  extent 
of  revolutionizing  our  educational  ideals. 

The  first  of  these  fundamental  doctrines  was  this  —  that 
no  single  class  of  men  and  no  single  class  of  subjects 
should  dominate  the  educational  policies  of  this  people ; 
and  the  second  was  that  in  the  last  analysis  higher  educa- 
tion is  a  public  and  not  a  personal  matter. 

The  state  university  was  in  some  sense  a  protest  against 
the  order  of  things  then  existing.  Colleges  were  giving 
their  exclusive  attention  to  an  exceedingly  narrow  range 
of  human  knowledge,  and  conducting  courses  of  study 
that  fitted  well  for  theology,  medicine,  and  law,  but  were 
calculated  to  unfit  for  other  activities  of  men  that  were  also 
essential ;  so  that  education  served  a  few  occupations  at 
the  expense  of  all  others ;  for  no  man  could  find  anywhere 
on  earth  courses  of  study  to  fit  himself  for  usefulness  out- 
side the  so-called  learned  professions,  good  and  useful  in 
themselves,  but  insufficient  for  all  the  needs  of  a  high  civi- 
lized people.  This  being  true,  the  effect  of  education  was  not 
to  enrich  the  lives  of  men  generally  and  to  advance  civiliza- 
tion uniformly,  but  rather  to  draw  from  all  walks  of  life 
into  a  few  favored  occupations,  and  leave  the  great  outside 
mass  of  human  knowledge  undeveloped,  neglected,  and 
largely  inaccessible,  and  most  of  the  activities  of  men  un- 
touched by  the  vitalizing  energy  of  learning. 

The  protest  arose  because  all  classes  were  not  given 
equal  opportunity  and  all  activities  were  not-  equally  bene- 
fited, in  which  case  the  public  was  not  well  served.     Under 


EDUCATION  FOR   EFFICIENCY  35 

the  old  regime  agriculture  remained  undeveloped,  and  farm- 
ing was  common  labor.  Building  and  mechanics  gener- 
ally were  craftsmanship  executed  mostly  by  unskilled  labor, 
which  was  bad  for  the  men  and  the  industry,  and  worse 
for  the  public  whom  they  served. 

The  state  universities  were  established  primarily  to  teach 
the  branches  of  knowledge  especially  related  to  the  indus- 
tries of  life ;  but  their  field  has  broadened  in  the  doing, 
and  their  success  has  shown  not  only  that  learning  may 
be  useful  without  losing  its  educative  value,  but  that  all 
branches  of  learning  are  both  useful  and  educative,  and 
thereby  worthy  of  being  taught  to  somebody ;  that  in  the 
interest  of  the  public  it  is  the  business  of  a  school  as  of  a 
university  to  teach  more  things  than  any  single  man  may 
desire  to  know,  and  that  it  is  the  business  of  our  institu- 
tions of  learning  to  reflect  in  their  laboratories  and  in  their 
class  rooms  the  life  and  essential  activities  of  our  civilization 
at  least  in  all  its  major  aspects. 

The  other  new  idea  introduced  through  the  state  univer- 
sity is  that  education  is  first  of  all  a  public  rather  than  a 
personal  matter.  Colleges  had  long  been  maintained  for 
the  convenience  of  those  who  desired  and  were  able  to  pay 
for  an  education,  and  those  who  took  these  courses  did  so 
with  a  view  to  bettering  their  condition  personally.  While 
the  campaign  for  industrial  education  savored  largely  of 
personal  needs  and  class  equality  in  educational  opportu- 
nity, yet  in  its  working  out  we  have  discovered  the  deeper 
principle ;  viz.  that  the  public  is  not  well  served  until  we 
educate  freely  for  all  useful  activities,  to  the  end  that  these 
activities  shall  be  in  the  hands  of  educated  men,  under 
whom  only  will  they  develop  and  by  which  development 
only  will  our  civilization  as  a  whole  prosper  and  progress. 
The  ultimate  purpose  of  a  great  system  of  education  is  and 


36  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

must  be  the  development  of  human  activities,  both  indus- 
trial and  non-industrial,  and  our  great  "demand  upon  the 
individuals  that  have  enjoyed  its  advantages  is  service  — 
service  in  something,  somewhere ;  anything,  anywhere. 

The  great  mass  of  human  happiness  will  always  arise 
out  of  doing  well  the  common  things  of  life,  and  the 
happiness  of  the  individual  will  lie  in  that  creative  genius 
which  does  to-day  the  same  thing  it  did  yesterday,  but  does 
it  better.  All  else  is  spice  and  seasoning  to  life,  and  as  we 
cannot  live  on  cakes  and  spices,  so  the  enduring  things 
will  always  be  the  useful  things.  There  will  be  no  edu- 
cated aristocracy,  for  education  will  have  a  higher  purpose 
than  to  give  one  man  an  advantage  over  another. 

Every  man's  life  is  a  comedy,  a  tragedy,  or  a  symphony, 
according  as  he  is  educated.  It  was  a  great  thing  wheti 
the  common  man  first  lifted  up  his  head,  looked  about  him 
and  said,  "  I,  too,  will  be  educated."  It  is  our  business  to  see 
to  it  that  that  high  resolve  shall  not  destroy  the  race,  but 
shall  still  further  bless  it. 


CHAPTER   II 

INDUSTRIAL    EDUCATION    WITH    SPECIAL    REFERENCE 
TO  THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  i 

"We  have  learned  to  look  to  our  schools  and  to  ask,  in  the 
name  of  charity  as  well  as  of  education,  whether  they  are  training 
for  that  efficiency  which  will  prevent  poverty."  —  Edward  T.  Devine, 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly^  December,  1908. 

The  subject  of  industrial  education  is  so  broad  and  the 
interests  concerned  are  so  vast  and  so  varied  that  no  single 
writer  can  hope  to  bring  to  its  discussion  that  complete 
knowledge  which  is  necessary  to  the  rational  and  final  so- 
lution of  a  difficult  problem. 

I  cannot  and  do  not  pretend,  therefore,  to  speak  with 
authority,  so  that  what  I  shall  say  is  to  be  regarded  as  a 
contribution  to  our  deliberations,  arising  out  of  a  some- 
what intimate  association  with  a  particular  class  of  people 
in  their  attempt  to  supply  their  educational  needs  in  such 
a  way  as  to  contribute  to,  and  not  detract  from,  the  general 
welfare. 

Again,  of  the  many  things  that  might  be  said  and  of  the 
many  considerations  that  might  be  advanced  as  bearing 
upon  so  important  a  subject,  it  is  manifestly  impossible  to 
do  more  than  to  select  here  a  thought  and  there  an  illus- 
tration, depending  largely  upon  the  happy  circumstance 
of  accident  if  the  picture  drawn  be  true  to  life  or  even 
the  reader  be  enabled   to  see   clearly  any  picture  at  all 

^  The  substance  of  an  address  delivered  at  the  high  school  conference,  University  of 
Illinois,  November  20,  1908. 

37 


38  EDUCATION   FOR  EFFICIENCY 

from  the  meager  outlines  that  must  of  necessity  be  hastily 
drawn. 

It  is  extremely  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  define  indus- 
trial education,  but  we  all  know  very  well  what  it  means. 
For  example,  it  means  education  in  and  for  agriculture, 
the  mechanic  arts,  household  affairs,  and  the  major  indus- 
tries generally,  as  distinct  from  education  in  and  for  the 
so-called  learned  professions.  It  means  specialized  educa- 
tion in  and  for  the  ordinary  occupations  of  men,  as  distinct 
from  the  purely  mental  occupations,  and  as  distinct  also 
from  mere  mental  acquisition  and  training  without  regard 
to  occupation. 

The  first  step  in  the  solution  of  this  question  has  been 
taken  already  in  the  educational  world  quite  outside  of  our 
field,  and  we  are  greatly  relieved  and  advanced  thereby  in 
our  present  considerations.  The  time  has  passed  when 
the  so-called  general  education  is  held  to  be  ample  for  all 
purposes,  and  even  quite  outside  of  industries  we  have 
highly  specialized  courses  —  courses  in  journalism,  courses 
in  diplomacy,  courses  in  banking,  in  accounting,  in  music, 
in  painting  —  all  professional,  but  all,  in  the  strictest  sense, 
non-industrial. 

The  need  of  specialized  courses  looking  to  occupations 
outside  of  the  original  triumvirate  of  law,  medicine,  and 
theology,  is,  therefore,  already  well  recognized,  and  it  re- 
lieves us  mightily,  for  we  can  begin  at  this  point  and 
confine  our  discussion  to  the  need  for  courses  looking  to 
industrial  careers  and  to  the  question  of  how  and  where 
these  courses  should  be  offered. 

This  matter  of  industrial  education  has  been  before  the 
public  a  generation  and  more  until  now,  like  a  poor  rela- 
tion, it  is  ever  with  us.  Feeble  at  first  but  always  insistent, 
like  Banquo's  ghost,  it  would  not  down,  but  it  has  gathered 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  IN  fflGH  SCHOOLS       39 

force  and  finish  with  the  years,  until  to-day  it  is  about  the 
most  robust  educational  problem  before  us  as  well  as  one 
of  the  most  important,  because  of  the  far-reaching  conse- 
quences of  whatever  policies  may  be  adopted  for  its  solution. 

Some  of  the  methods  that  have  been  proposed  are  so 
grossly  inadequate  on  the  one  hand  and  so  oblivious  of 
racial  integrity  and  the  highest  public  good  upon  the  other 
as  to  force  us  to  the  conclusion  that  the  advocates  are  not 
fully  advised  of  all  the  forces  that  have  brought  this  ques- 
tion to  the  front,  and  consequently  their  solutions  are  not 
solutions,  but  only  temporizing  substitutes.  Let  us  not  err 
at  least  in  this  direction.  Let  us,  therefore,  at  the  outset 
inquire  somewhat  carefully  into  the  conditions  that  have 
brought  the  problem  before  us. 

Now  the  demand  for  industrial  education  is  not  a  piece 
of  academic  evolution ;  that  is  to  say,  it  did  not  originate 
in  the  schools.  It  arose  as  one  of  the  demands  of  the 
masses  of  men  for  better  life  and  opportunity.  Its  nature, 
as  well  as  its  relation  to  other  forms  of  education,  can  best 
be  understood  in  connection  with  the  conditions  of  its  evo- 
lution. Therefore,  at  the  risk  of  seeming  to  wander  far 
afield,  let  us  at  this  point  refresh  our  memories  a  bit  upon 
our  social  and  educational  history  and  development. 

Our  modern  educational  system  is  the  product  of  com- 
paratively recent  conditions.  It  is  not  the  lineal  descend- 
ant of  Greece  or  of  Rome,  of  Egypt  or  of  Babylonia.  It 
was  born  in  the  Middle  Ages,  nourished  in  the  cloister, 
grew  with  Magna  Charta,  and  is  coming  to  its  fruitage 
now. 

In  those  dark  days,  when  might  was  right,  the  common 
man  was  counted  with  his  cattle  as  part  of  the  spoil  and 
the  property  of  the  latest  conqueror.  When  war  blotted 
out  industry,  no  man  could  succeed  except  upon  the  king's 


40  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

favor,  and  when  the  king  declared,  "  The  state,  it  is  I,"  it 
was  only  the  monk  in  the  cloister  that  dared  dispute  him. 
It  is  exceedingly  significant  for  our  purpose  that  it  was  in 
these  days  —  not  so  very  long  ago  as  time  is  measured  by 
racial  history  —  when  kings  could  neither  read  nor  write 
but  counted  learning  as  foolishness,  —  it  was  in  these  days 
that  Magna  Charta  granted  to  monk  and  to  freeman  alike 
the  blessings  of  legal  rights  and  civil  liberty. 

This  was  the  first  recognition  of  the  rights  of  the  com- 
mon man  since  the  days  of  Greece  and  Rome.  It  made 
the  evolution  of  a  people  possible,  nay  inevitable,  and  there 
and  then  was  laid  the  foundation  for  the  conditions  that 
have  given  rise  to  the  problems  of  industrial  education  in 
our  own  day. 

It  was  then  that  the  lamp  of  learning,  like  the  lamp 
of  liberty,  flickered  only  in  the  cloister,  and  education,  like 
religion,  meant  separation  from  the  world,  which  was  re- 
garded, properly  I  am  convinced,  as  wholly  given  over  to 
the  flesh  and  the  devil.  Under  conditions  such  as  these, 
meditation  was  the  only  occupation  of  the  thoughtful  man, 
religion  was  his  only  consolation,  and  the  only  use  for 
learning  was  in  the  reading  of  the  Scriptures.  What  won- 
der that  it  has  taken  all  these  years  afterward  to  make  our 
religion  really  useful ;  what  wonder,  too,  that  in  our  own 
day  we  are  having  the  trouble  of  our  lives  in  the  endeavor 
to  make  of  learning  not  only  a  consolation  and  an  inspira- 
tion, but  a  useful  thing  as  well ! 

With  the  revival  of  learning,  humanity  flourished.  The 
learned  professions  developed,  and  men  prospered  and 
grew  happy.  Property  became  secure,  and  the  fruits  of 
industry  belonged  to  the  one  who  earned  them.  For  the 
first  time  in  the  modern  world,  life  to  the  common  man 
promised  to  be  worth  the  living. 


INDUSTRIAL   EDUCATION  IN   HIGH   SCHOOLS        41 

It  was  inevitable  now  that  this  common  man  should 
begin  to  think,  and  as  he  thought,  become  ambitious.  The 
rise  of  individuals  had  proved  him  to  be  made  of  the  same 
stuff  as  other  men,  and  he  was  conscious  of  his  possibilities. 
He  determined  to  avail  himself  of  the  opportunities  of 
life  and,  noting  the  advantages  of  education  to  other  men 
and  their  conditions,  he  resolved  to  become  educated 
himself.   " 

Very  natural  was  all  this.  The  common  man,  like  others, 
would  better  his  conditions  if  he  could,  and  he  came  rightly 
to  conclude  that  the  place  and  the  way  of  beginning  was 
to  possess  himself  of  a  fair  share  of  the  world's  knowl- 
edge, at  least  so  far  as  it  applied  to  his  condition.  His 
resolve,  therefore,  to  be  educated,  was  as  natural  as  life ; 
indeed,  it  was  the  inevitable  consequence  of  liberty  to  a 
capable  race. 

The  resolve  of  the  common  man  to  secure  the  blessings 
and  the  graces  of  learning  was  not  announced  formally  at 
any  great  national  or  international  gathering.  It  was  not 
the  result  of  the  labors  of  any  committee  on  resolutions. 
It  was  the  result  of  a  deep-seated  conviction,  born  silently 
but  simultaneously  in  the  hearts  of  thousands  upon  thou- 
sands of  a  free  and  capable  people.  And  it  has  come  on 
silently,  but  relentlessly  as  the  tide,  till  now  it  is  well  upon 
us  ;  and  here  lies  our  problem. 

This  resolve  of  the  common  man  to  be  educated  —  what 
was  it  ?  What  did  it  mean  ?  Whatever  else  it  meant  and 
is  meaning,  it  means  universal  education.  If  the  common 
man  had  been  contented  to  do  without  learning,  and  we 
had  all  been  willing  to  let  him,  our  educational  problems 
in  these  days  would  have  been  comparatively  simple. 

We  should  have  gone  on  as  before,  fitting  men  for  the 
learned  professions  only.     I  imagine,  however,  even  then, 


42  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

as  learning  grew  and  the  world's  stock  of  knowledge  ac- 
cumulated, we  should  still  have  seen  substantial  additions 
to  these  so-called  learned  professions,  and  that  by  this  road, 
if  by  no  other,  through  the  very  exigency  of  pubHc  need, 
we  should  one  day  come  to  develop  a  scientific  agricul- 
ture, a  scientific  engineering,  a  scientific  system  of  house- 
hold management,  and  so  would  the  number  and  the 
range  of  learned  occupations  develop  in  good  time  as 
the  very  reflex  of  the  wealth  of  human  knowledge. 

But  this  common  man  of  ours  has  vastly  hastened  matters 
by  his  hitherto  unheard-of  and  rather  sudden  resolve  to  be 
educated,  thus  forcing  upon  us  without  much  warning  and 
with  little  to  guide  us,  the  stupendous  problem  of  universal 
education,  for  that  is  what  our  problem  really  is. 

Now,  universal  education  is  something  more  than  admit- 
ting everybody  to  the  privileges  of  the  schools.  It  did  not 
take  this  common  man  long  to  find  out  that  the  learning  of 
the  cloister  was  not  fitted  to  his  necessities,  and  he  learned, 
also,  in  good  time,  that  the  subject-matter  and  the  spirit  of 
the  courses  designed  for  theology,  law,  and  medicine, 
though  admirably  adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  people  they 
were  designed  to  serve,  failed  utterly  to  serve  the  common 
man  and  his  needs,  save  only  when  he  desired  to  escape 
into  one  of  the  learned  professions. 

This  for  a  time  worked  well,  and  many  men  did  better 
their  condition  by  escaping  to  these  professions.  But 
presently  was  discovered  what  we  should  all  along  have 
known ;  viz.  that  a  course  of  study  has  a  powerful  influence 
not  only  over  the  future  career  of  a  boy,  but  ultimately 
over  the  destiny  of  occupations. 

Thus  it  came  about  that  individuals  that  went  to  the 
schools  out  of  the  common  walks  of  life  did  not  return. 
And  thus  it  came  about  that  the  learned  professions  were 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  IN  HIGH   SCHOOLS        43 

overloaded  with  much  material  imsuited  to  their  needs ;  that 
many  educated  men  failed  in  lines  of  business  to  which  by 
nature  they  were  not  adapted ;  that  many  products  of  the 
schools  halted  at  the  threshold  and  did  nothing  in  particular. 
Thus  it  came  about  that  reproach  was  laid  upon  education, 
and,  what  was  worse  than  all  else,  the  common  occupations 
were  not  themselves  touched  by  the  advantages  of  learning. 
Thus  it  came  about  that  our  first  attempts  at  universal 
education  were  gigantic  failures,  because  we  ignorantly 
assumed  that  a  form  of  education  that  was  good  for  one 
man  and  his  peculiar  needs  was  good  enough  for  all  men, 
and  if  not  directly  adapted  to  their  needs,  they  themselves 
could  make  the  application  later  on. 

It  is  not  strange,  with  this  experience  running  over  many 
years  and  affecting  and  disappointing  thousands  of  people, 
that  many  good  men  held  universal  education  to  be  a  failure 
and  wholly  undesirable  in  theory,  as  tending  to  industrial 
disturbance  and  to  general  social  unrest.  But  here  again 
the  common  man  —  common  only  because  there  are  so 
many  of  him,  and  uncommon  because  it  is  his  to  meet  and 
reckon  with  the  everyday  issues  of  life  —  here  again  the 
common  man  saw  with  a  clearer  vision  than  others  what 
was  the  occasion  of  the  failure.  He  noted  not  only  that 
when  a  boy  went  from  industrial  life  into  the  schools  he 
seldom  if  ever  returned,  but  he  noted  also  that  when  he  did 
return  his  education  was  ill  adapted  to  his  needs.  He  noted, 
too,  this  common  man,  that  this  policy  was  stripping  the 
major  industries  of  their  brightest  and  naturally  most  ambi- 
tious men  only,  to  pile  them  up  where  they  were  not  wanted 
or  to  turn  them  into  cheap  clerks,  to  lead  dependent  and 
unproductive  lives. 

Nor  was  this  the  worst.  The  industries  themselves  were 
not  developing  under  this  regime.     When  the  best  men 


44  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

went  out  and  did  not  return,  or  if  they  did  return,  failed 
to  bring  into  the  industry  that  information  and  training  that 
would  still  further  improve  it,  then  for  that  industry,  knowl- 
edge was  unutilized,  and  education  might  as  well,  even 
better,  not  exist.  To  this  extent,  therefore,  and  for  this 
industry  universal  education  was  a  failure,  and  more  than  a 
failure,  for  it  attracted  away  the  ablest  and  most  progressive 
of  the  young  men,  leaving  only  the  least  ambitious  and  the 
least  capable  behind. 

The  common  man  with  his  practical  vision  saw  all  this, 
and  with  his  characteristic  directness  went  straight  to  the 
root  of  the  difficulty,  suggesting  a  remedy  that  was  at  once 
concrete  and  effective.  He  said,  "As  the  older  courses 
are  adapted  to  the  learned  profession,  so  will  we  have  other 
courses  where  matter  and  method  are  adapted  to  the  needs 
of  the  industries  and  the  industrial  people,"  all  of  which 
was  and  is  yet  not  only  good  sense,  but  good  educational, 
social,  and  economic  philosophy. 

This,  in  its  day,  was  regarded  as  heresy.  As  we  all 
know,  the  old-time  schools  for  the  most  part  refused  to 
establish  such  courses,  and  the  establishment  of  separate 
schools  was,  under  these  conditions,  a  necessity.  Now  the 
common  experience  has  been  that  when  courses  suitable  to 
the  needs  of  the  special  industries  have  been  properly 
formed  and  properly  taught,  whether  in  separate  schools 
or  in  company  with  other  courses,  young  men  have  taken 
them  in  increasing  numbers.  Moreover,  they  have  returned 
to  the  industries  afterward  and  succeeded,  because  they 
have  taken  back  with  them  not  only  new  and  useful  knowl- 
edge, whereby  the  industry  is  better  developed,  but  besides 
they  have  taken  with  them  many  of  the  graces  of  education, 
whereby  the  people  are  benefited  as  well  as  their  industries. 
In  this  way  we  have  seen  a  new  meaning  in  universal  edu- 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  IN  HIGH  SCHOOLS       45 

cation  and  have  taken  some  advanced  lessons  in  its  admin- 
istration through  its  introduction  into  the  institutions  of 
highest  learning. 

In  this  way  we  have  learned  that  education  must  be 
somewhat  adapted  to  the  ends  in  view ;  that  as  civilization 
advances  and  knowledge  accumulates  there  must  be  many 
courses  for  many  men,  and  we  have  learned,  too,  that  there 
is  by  nature  nothing  incompatible  between  them  because 
higher  industrial  education  flourishes  nowhere  else  so  well 
as  when  associated  with  the  old-time  courses  in  the  state 
university,  that  unique  and  modern  association  of  teaching 
and  investigation  that  is  designed  to  minister  to  all  the 
needs,  industrial,  social,  economic,  and  artistic,  of  a  rapidly 
advancing  civilization.  As  a  result  of  this  experience  we 
are  all  now  in  favor  of  industrial  education  without  know- 
ing or  caring  exactly  what  it  is  or  precisely  how  it  is  to 
be  administered.  Nobody  derides  it  any  longer.  The  old 
"issues"  are  dead  issues.  There  is  no  conflict  between 
the  classics  and  the  industries,  but  all  thinking  men  see 
clearly  now  that  whether  the  education  be  classical  or  in- 
dustrial, it  is  alike  a  part,  and  an  essential  part,  of  the  suc- 
cessful development  of  a  young,  strong,  and  virile  race. 

The  question  now  is  as  to  practical  methods  of  pro- 
cedure. There  is  little  dispute  as  to  the  nature  of  courses 
best  adapted  to  industrial  ends,  though  much  improvement 
will  be  made  as  time  passes.  Academic  standards  and 
educational  values  are  being  set,  and  the  future  of  indus- 
trial education  is  assured,  whether  regarded  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  individual  or  that  of  the  industry.  The 
only  real  question  —  and  it  is  gigantic  —  is  whether  and 
to  what  extent  industrial  courses  should  be  added  to  our 
existing  schools,  or  whether  they  should  be  relegated  to 
separate  institutions.     Upon  this  point,  which  is  vital  to  the 


46  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

interests  we  all  represent,  and  which  is  after  all  the  only 
present  issue,  I  venture  somewhat  extended  discussion. 

Of  one  large  fact  we  may  rest  well  assured  at  the  outset ; 
viz.  that  industrial  education  is  with  us  to  stay.  The  in- 
dustrial people  insist  upon  it  and  public  needs  demand  it 
for  reasons  already  mentioned  and  evident  to  every  keen 
observer.  We  can,  therefore,  find  a  place  for  it  in  our 
schools,  making  it  an  integral  part  of  our  system  of  uni- 
versal education,  or  it  will  make  a  place  for  itself  and  a 
system  of  its  own,  which  will  be  the  worse  for  all  of  us,  as 
I  have  endeavored  elsewhere  to  point  out.^ 

Moreover,  the  crux  of  the  situation  lies  not  with  indus- 
trial education,  but  far  back  of  it  in  that  general  realm  of 
education  for  efficiency  which  is  a  natural  corollary  of  a 
logical  system  of  universal  education.  We  already  have 
abundant  proof  of  the  fact  that  all  people  cannot  be  edu- 
cated upon  one  model,  and  that  to  attempt  it  not  only 
greatly  disturbs  the  social  and  industrial  balance,  but  also 
produces  too  many  failures. 

There  is  one  thing  worse  and  more  to  be  dreaded  than 
illiteracy,  and  that  is  incompetence,  and  if  there  is  one 
form  of  incompetence  more  hopeless  than  all  others,  it  is 
that  form  which  arises  from  bad  schooling.  All  consider- 
ations of  public  welfare  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  we 
must  have  a  philosophy  of  education  and  a  method  of  pro- 
cedure that  will  meet,  not  a  portion  merely,  but  all  the 
needs  of  a  highly  civilized  race. 

Education  is  vastly  more  than  a  personal  matter.  We 
have  often  erred  in  the  past  by  forgetting  this,  and  we 
have  proceeded  as  if  no  question  were  involved  beyond 
helping  the  individuals  in  our  schools  to  improve  their 
personal  condition.     That  is  why  in  the  past  our  school 

1  See  chapter  on  Unity  in  Education. 


INDUSTRIAL   EDUCATION   IN   HIGH   SCHOOLS        47 

system  has  greatly  disturbed  our  industrial  equilibrium 
and  threatened  permanently  to  injure  the  social  state. 

If,  as  formerly,  only  a  few  people  and  interests  were  af- 
fected by  our  system  of  education,  it  would  matter  little  to 
the  general  public  what  is  taught,  or  how  it  is  taught ;  but 
when  we  embark  upon  a  scheme  of  universal  education  as 
we  have  done,  we  must  have  a  philosophy  of  education  as 
broad  as  the  activities  and  the  capabilities  of  the  race, 
or  else  we  shall  be  injured  instead  of  advanced  at  certain 
points  and,  to  that  extent,  at  least,  education  prove  a  curse 
instead  of  a  blessing. 

And  so  it  is  that  there  is  a  business,  a  social,  a  com- 
munity, a  racial  side  as  well  as  a  personal  side  to  educa- 
tion, and  if  we  are  to  have  anything  like  a  system  of  uni- 
versal education,  then  it  must  touch  and  uplift  and  develop 
all  the  major  activities  of  the  race,  as  well  as  train  and 
elevate  the  people  in  all  the  walks  of  life. 

I  have  in  succeeding  chapters  gone  somewhat  at  length 
into  the  reasons  for  preferring  that  we  retain  the  unity 
and  integrity  of  our  educational  system  by  taking  into  our 
schools  not  only  industrial  education,  but  all  other  forms 
of  educational  necessity  that  are  now  felt  or  that  may  in  the 
future  arise,  to  the  end  that  all  interests  may  be  well  served 
and  that,  too,  in  a  way  not  involving  influences  that  tend  to 
break  up  the  homogeneity  of  our  people,  but  above  all 
preventing  the  evolution  of  an  American   peasant  class. 

This  matter  has  been  fully  settled  in  the  colleges  and  the 
universities;  it  awaits  solution  only  in  the  secondary  schools. 
The  institutions  of  highest  learning  are  freely  introducing 
the  most  highly  specialized  courses,  both  vocational  and 
non-vocational,  industrial  and  non-industrial,  nor  do  they 
feel  that  their  educational  standards  suffer  thereby. 

Moreover,  the  strictly  vocational  courses  succeed  nowhere 


48  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

else  so  well  as  when  intimately  associated  with  the  non-vo- 
cational. This  association  is  good  for  all  parties.  It  not 
only  adds  culture  and  refinement  to  the  vocational,  but  it 
adds  directness  and  initiative  to  the  cultural,  thus  turning 
back  to  the  community  a  product  whose  individuals  are 
highly  schooled  in  specialized  activities  and  therefore 
likely  to  succeed,  yet  by  association  have  learned  to  be 
broadly  sympathetic  with  all  activities  and  with  all  classes 
of  effective  people. 

We  have  thus  learned  that  it  is  not  only  unnecessary  but 
unwise  to  segregate  an  interest  from  its  associations,  and 
the  state  universities,  which  attempt  to  reflect  in  their  cur- 
ricula and  their  atmosphere  the  whole  life  of  the  people, 
are  gradually  coming  to  be  regarded  as  the  highest  expres- 
sion of  the  truest  philosophy  of  universal  education.  In  a 
word,  I  would  see  their  policy  transferred  to  the  American 
high  school,  to  the  end  that  this  most  representative  of  all 
schools  may  do  for  the  masses  what  the  university  is  doing 
for  the  few. 

A  privately  endowed  institution  may  of  course  teach  what 
it  pleases,  and  one  supported  by  tuition  must  teach  what  the 
students  come  to  learn,  but  institutions  of  learning  of  all 
grades  supported  by  public  funds  are  morally  bound  to 
truly  reflect  the  life  of  the  people,  and  it  is  for  this  reason 
that  I  invite  the  American  high  school  —  which  is  not  a 
preparatory  school  —  to  study  and  to  imitate  the  policy 
of  the  state  universities. 

I  do  not  propose  industrial  education  in  the  high  school  as 
the  easiest  way  of  meeting  the  demand,  but  as,  all  things 
considered,  the  best  way.  Far  from  being  the  easiest  way, 
I  am  convinced  that  so  far  as  present  comfort  is  concerned, 
it  is  the  most  difficult.  It  is  the  results  that  mightily 
justify  our  labors,  however,  and  make  it  wise  to  expend 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  IN  HIGH  SCHOOLS        49 

some  special  energy  in  meeting  this  as  we  shall  need  to 
meet  other  and  future  new  demands  as  they  arise  from 
time  to  time. 

So  it  will  be  worth  the  trouble  for  the  high  schools  to  take 
in  and  take  care  of  this  latest  demand  of  our  people,  never 
fearing  but  that  the  funds  will  be  forthcoming  as  its  use- 
fulness is  proved,  and  resting  well  assured  that  other  and 
still  other  similar  opportunities  will  arise  in  the  future  as 
they  attempt  to  meet  and  serve  the  needs  of  this  rapidly 
developing  people  with  its  complex  life  and  its  progressive 
activities. 

What  then  is  involved  in  this  great  duty  which  includes, 
but  does  not  end  with,  industrial  education  ? 

First  of  all,  and  in  all,  and  above  all,  this  is  involved  — 
that  the  American  high  school  must  study  and  teach 
American  life  as  a  whole.  The  glory  of  Greece!  How 
was  it  evolved,  mostly  within  the  short  space  of  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  ?  Not  alone  or  mainly  by  the  medi- 
tative study  of  Babylonian  antiquities,  but  by  the  universal 
belief  in  and  study  of  Greece,  her  people,  her  institutions, 
her  interests,  and  her  activities.  Now,  I  would  be  the  last 
to  decry  the  study  of  ancient  languages,  literatures,  and 
institutions,  but  I  would  be  the  first  to  insist  that  it  should 
be  done  for  a  purpose  beyond  mere  personal  gratification, 
and  that  its  high  purpose  be  the  upbuilding  here  among 
ourselves  of  the  most  complete  development  of  which  our 
race  is  capable.  To  this  exalted  end  I  invite  all  schools  of 
all  grades  everywhere,  but  first  of  all,  and  more  than  all,  the 
American  secondary  school,  because  it  has  its  roots  in  the 
very  lives  and  hearts  of  the  people ;  and  so  I  would  put 
industrial  education  into  the  schools,  not  altogether  be- 
cause it  is  demanded,  but  because  it  is  an  essential  part  of 
a  system  of  education  that  aims  at  racial  development. 


50  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

More  specifically,  what  details  are  involved  if  we  take  this 
matter  of  industrial  education  into  the  high  school  ?  So 
far  as  agriculture  is  concerned,  and  the  present  movement 
has  come  largely  from  that  side,  I  am  comparatively  clear. 

I  doubt  much  whether  the  high  school  in  the  heart  of  a 
great  city  has  a  function  in  and  for  agriculture  as  we  of 
the  country  understand  the  term.  It  may  teach  it,  or 
certain  phases  of  it,  for  pedagogical  reasons,  and  upon 
that  point  educators  who  have  had  experience  are  most  com- 
petent to  judge ;  but  when  we  of  the  farm  are  talking  about 
agriculture  in  the  high  school,  we  do  not  mean  nature 
study,  nor  do  we  mean  a  slight  inclination  of  science  and 
mathematics  to  country  affairs  for  illustrative  purposes. 
That  doubtless  is  good  pedagogy  in  itself,  but  when  we 
talk  about  agriculture  in  these  schools,  we  mean  a  real 
study  of  and  real  instruction  in  those  things  that  are  in- 
volved in  the  business  of  farming  and  in  the  affairs  of 
country  life. 

We  do  not,  therefore,  ask  the  city  high  school  to  teach 
agriculture  unless  it  finds  it  advantageous  to  its  general  in- 
terests to  do  so,  but  of  the  country  high  school  and  of  the 
village  high  school  with  a  large  country  constituency,  we 
do  ask  it. 

And  what  is  it  that  we  ask  ?  Not  that  the  whole  art 
and  business  of  agriculture  should  be  taught,  and  above 
all,  we  do  not  ask  that  the  school  become  an  agricultural 
institute.  But  we  do  ask  that  certain  characteristic 
phases  of  the  farming  business  and  of  country  Hfe  be 
carefully  studied  and  taught  along  with  other  things,  upon 
the  ground  that  it  is  the  business  of  the  high  school  to  take 
note  of  and  to  reflect  as  far  as  possible  the  major  activities 
and  the  conditions  of  life  of  the  people  whose  children  are 
to  be  educated,  and  on  the  further  ground  that,  whatever  the 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  IN   HIGH   SCHOOLS        5 1 

future  career,  the  education  of  the  young  should  begin  at 
and  be  at  least  partly  concerned  with  the  life  activities  into 
which  the  child  was  born,  and  with  which  only  he  holds 
living  acquaintance. 

Nor  is  this  so  difficult  of  accomplishment  as  it  may  seem. 
To  study  the  lives  of  the  people  —  of  our  people  in  these 
days  —  is  the  fundamental  business  of  the  schools,  and  to 
add  to  this  something  of  vocational  technique  is  not  an  in- 
surmountable task.'  It  is  not  the  art  of  agriculture  —  that 
is,  its  handicraft  —  that  needs  most  to  be  taught.  That  is 
long  and  difficult  of  accomplishment.  Moreover,  it  is  more 
a  matter  of  practice  than  of  instruction,  and  therefore  of 
questionable  educational  value.  It  is  the  science  of  agri- 
culture and  the  economic  and  social  conditions  of  country 
life  that  need  teaching  most,  and  that  is  what  the  schools 
are  best  fitted  to  undertake. 

The  farmer  understands  the  art  of  agriculture  fairly  well. 
Handicraft  is  his  long  suit,  and  to  teach  him  much  in  that 
direction  would  require  the  trade  school.  This  may  come 
in  time  for  certain  branches,  as,  for  example,  dairying,  but 
what  is  most  needed  now  is  such  scientific  study  and  moral 
support  of  agriculture  as  only  the  well-established  high 
schools  can  give  —  and  when  I  say  agriculture  I  mean  not 
only  the  business  of  farming  but  the  affairs  of  country  living, 
for  agriculture  is  not  only  an  occupation  but  a  mode  of 
life  as  well. 

Farmers  understand  the  art  of  agriculture  fairly  well, 
but  they  do  not  understand  the  science  of  agriculture,  or, 
in  other  words,  they  do  not  understand  either  the  sciences 
that  underlie  agriculture  or  their  application  to  its  affairs. 
This  information,  so  far  at  least  as  it  applies  to  such  fun- 
damental facts  as  soil  fertility,  plant  and  animal  improve- 
ment, animal  nutrition,  home  equipment  and   sanitation, 


52  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

any  good  high  school  can,  if  it  will,  within  the  limits  of 
stock  knowledge,  arrange  to  supply;  and  if  it  is  a  high  school 
undertaking  to  educate  country  youth,  then  this  informa- 
tion and  help  is  not  only  its  rarest  privilege  but  its  most 
sacred  duty. 

What  is  needed  to  start  with  is  for  the  high  schools  to 
put  in  one  or  two  elective  courses  in  agriculture,  and  to 
teach  these  courses  the  best  they  can.  An  honest  attempt 
will,  here  as  elsewhere,  produce  substantial  results.  The 
teacher  of  science  is  the  natural  one  to  begin  it,  but  as  soon 
as  possible  a  teacher  should  be  provided  who  has  special 
training  in  the  science  of  agriculture.  Do  you  say  that 
such  teachers  are  not  available  ?  They  are  coming  along, 
and  the  demand  will  be  answered  in  good  time  by  a 
supply.  Only  show  the  teacher  how  he  can  better  his 
condition  and,  like  other  men,  he  will  jump  at  the  chance. 
Text-books,  too,  are  now  available,  others  are  in  prepara- 
tion, and  matters  are  moving  rapidly  ;  indeed  more  of  real 
value  has  been  accomplished  in  this  direction  in  the  last 
two  years  than  was  accomplished  during  the  first  thirty 
years  of  the  attempt  to  establish  agricultural  colleges. 
The  materials  for  this  work  are  now  well  at  hand,  as  will 
be  shown  in  a  succeeding  chapter. 

Again,  no  school  has  a  rarer  chance  to  study,  to  teach, 
and  to  impress  the  great  fundamentals  of  human  living  and 
social  and  economic  relations  than  has  the  high  school 
within  reach  of  a  country  community.  Here  life  is  un- 
adulterated with  much  that  disturbs  elsewhere,  and  here  a 
miracle  awaits  the  hand  of  the  teacher  who  fully  realizes 
his  opportunity  to  influence  the  life  of  his  people  in  his  own 
day  and  time. 

What  I  have  said  of  agriculture  I  am  convinced  applies 
equally  well  to  household  affairs,  only  at  this  point  all  high 


INDUSTRIAL   EDUCATION   IN   HIGH   SCHOOLS        53 

schools  are  certainly  involved.  By  the  division  of  labor 
anciently  established  and  for  which  both  custom  and  nature 
are  responsible,  the  care  of  the  house  is  woman's  work,  and 
whatever  the  choice  of  individuals,  we  as  educators  have 
no  right  to  take  possession  of  young  girls  and  keep  them 
in  the  schools  till  they  are  young  women  of  marriageable 
age,  without  turning  them  back  to  the  community  at  least 
somewhat  better  prepared  than  they  would  otherwise  have 
been  to  meet  the  responsibilities  and  the  work  of  woman. 
If  the  influence  of  our  schools  is  mainly  or  strongly  to  turn 
our  women  into  clerks,  or  even  teachers,  then,  useful  as 
these  callings  are,  the  quicker  we  amend  our  system  of 
education,  the  better.  The  business  of  the  schools  is  to 
train  the  great  mass  of  the  people  for  normal  lives  and  to 
preserve,  not  to  destroy,  what  may  be  called,  for  want  of  a 
better  term,  the  eternal  balance  of  things. 

Schools  have  much  to  do  to  compensate  for  the  fact  that 
they  take  the  children  out  of  real  life  for  a  period  of  years 
into  an  artificial  world  that  we  call  the  schoolhouse.  They 
come  out  of  it  with  stores  of  information,  to  be  sure,  but 
they  have  lost  a  subtle  something  that  comes  only  from 
personal  experience  in  real  life  during  the  days  of  develop- 
ment. We  are  coming  at  last  to  realize  that  there  is  more 
than  one  avenue  to  a  successful  life,  that  the  way  by  the  school- 
house  may  not  be  the  best  for  all  people,  and  that  whether 
it  is  the  best  will  depend  upon  whether  the  school  gives  a 
true  or  a  distorted  picture  of  life.  Is  the  mirror  of  life 
which  the  schools  hold  up  a  true  one  ?  Is  it  badly  concave 
or  convex  at  any  point  ?  If  so,  that  concavity  or  convexity 
needs  correction. 

The  farm  and  the  shop  and  the  work  of  the  household 
have  a  marked  influence  in  developing  executive  ability  and 
the  power  of  initiative  quite  independent  of  the  acquisition 


54  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

of  knowledge,  and  if  we  make  the  mistake  of  substituting 
mere  accumulation  of  facts  for  this  sort  of  development, 
and  sacrifice  the  one  for  the  other,  it  is  more  than  an  open 
question  if  on  the  whole  we  have  not  lost  more  than  we 
have  gained.  It  is  the  business  of  the  schools  to  impart 
the  one  without  the  loss  of  the  others,  an  additional  reason 
for  saying  that  much  lies  back  of  our  problem  besides  the 
mere  need  for  industrial  training. 

In  a  discussion  like  this  I  feel  bound  to  say  something 
about  the  mechanical  industries  which,  like  agriculture,  are 
fundamental,  not  only  because  they  concern  vast  masses 
of  men  but  because  the  industries  themselves  lie  at  the  basis 
of  our  further  development. 

What  I  can  say  on  this  point,  however,  is  more  by  infer- 
ence than  from  intimate  knowledge.  I  certainly  hold  most 
strenuously  that  training  in  the  use  of  certain  tools  is  funda- 
mental to  all  education.  The  square,  the  saw,  the  plane, 
the  hammer,  the  needle,  and  the  scissors,  like  the  alphabet, 
lie  at  the  bottom  of  civilization.  They  also  afford  the  most 
direct,  convenient,  and  rapid  means  for  teaching  not  only 
that  cooperation  of  eye  and  hand  but  also  that  rapid  and 
ready  execution  of  plans  which  marks  the  truly  educated 
man  or  woman.  All  this  is  already  recognized  for  peda- 
gogic reasons  alone,  and  we  have  both  sewing  and  manual 
training  in  our  schools  everywhere. 

But  this  is  quite  aside  from  the  other  question  —  shall 
these  things  be  taught  for  the  sake  of  the  mechanic  indus- 
tries and  as  avenues  to  an  occupation  ?  I  cannot  escape 
the  conviction  that  they  should.  If  the  schools  of  a  great 
city  do  not  reflect  the  life  of  that  city,  industrial  as  well  as 
otherwise,  then  will  the  best  children  leave  the  schools  or 
else,  what  is  worse,  the  schools  will  distort  the  social  and 
economic  conditions  of  that  city.      I  repeat  in  this  connec- 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  IN  HIGH  SCHOOLS        55 

tion  what  I  have  said  too  often  already  —  if  we  are  to  have 
a  system  of  universal  education,  then  it  must  universally 
educate,  or  we  shall  be  the  worse  for  it,  and  will  one  day 
reckon  with  the  consequences. 

These  boys  on  the  school  seats  in  the  grades !  Their 
fathers  are  in  the  counting  house,  the  store,  the  factory, 
the  rolling  mill,  the  foundry,  and  in  the  street-cleaning  de- 
partment. What  of  the  boys?  Side  by  side  they  sit  to 
imbibe  together  a  conception  of  the  world  and  form  some 
sort  of  plan  for  their  own  careers.  It  is  the  business  of  the 
school  to  help  them.  It  cannot  do  that  by  advising  them 
all  to  become  merchants,  because  all  the  occupations  must 
go  on  in  the  future  as  in  the  past  and,  in  general,  these 
boys  will  be  doing  in  a  decade  about  what  their  fathers 
are  doing  now.  It  cannot  be  predicted  of  any  particular 
boy  that  he  will  follow  his  father's  occupation  and  he 
ought  not,  but  it  can  be  said  with  confidence  of  a  room- 
ful that  they  will  be  doing  the  same  things  their  fathers 
are  doing,  because  we  are  talking  about  a  system  of  edu- 
cation for  all  the  people. 

After  the  schools  have  done  their  best,  much  will  be  left 
over  for  the  minor  industries,  and  here  is  the  undoubted 
function  of  the  trade  school,  but  if  we  cannot  and  do  not 
reflect  the  major  industries  in  our  school  system,  then  we 
do  not  make  them  highly  useful.  We  do  wrong  to  absorb 
several  years  of  a  child's  life  without  turning  him  out 
better  able  to  support  himself  than  if  he  had  not  attended 
school. 

Just  where  to  draw  the  line  between  the  ordinary  schools 
and  the  trade  schools  is  not  easy ;  indeed,  I  think  it  is  im- 
possible now  to  say,  but  I  propose  as  a  matter  of  safety 
and  to  facilitate  the  drawing  of  that  line  later  —  if  ever  — 
that  the  trade  schools  be  also  a  part  of  the  system  and 


56  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

under  the  same  management  as  our  other  schools.  Nobody 
holds  any  longer  to  the  three  learned  professions.  The 
list  of  honorable  occupations  touched  and  uplifted  by  edu- 
cation is  being  rapidly  lengthened  to  the  substantial  benefit 
of  all  concerned  and  the  list  of  so-called  trades  correspond- 
ingly shortened.  Some  time  these  limits  will  be  better 
defined  than  now,  but  in  the  meantime  let  us  so  adminis- 
ter our  education  that  an  occupation  may  take  its  place  in 
respectable  society  as  soon  and  as  rapidly  as  it  accumulates 
a  sufficient  body  of  knowledge  of  a  high  order. 

It  is  within  my  own  Ufetime  that  agriculture  has  fought 
for  and  won  a  place  as  a  dignified  calling  and  shown  that 
for  the  common  good  the  lands  ought  to  be  in  the  hands 
of  enlightened  people.  In  the  same  way  many  other  call- 
ings will  be  elevated  by  the  advantages  of  education  if  only 
favorable  opportunity  is  afforded,  and  we  will  all  agree  that 
the  gauge  of  our  civilization  will  in  the  end  be  fixed  by  the 
status  acquired  by  our  leading  necessary  occupations. 

To  facilitate  the  rapid  passing  of  these  occupations  to 
the  highest  state  and  to  hold  the  situation  together,  I  ear- 
nestly advocate  the  ownership  and  management  of  all  trade 
schools  and  all  other  schools  possible  by  the  same  boards  of 
education  and  the  same  superintendents  that  fix  the  policy 
of  the  public  school  system. 

If  we  can  do  this,  then  much  of  the  vocational  can  be 
introduced  into  high  schools  without  detriment  but  to  infi- 
nite advantage,  each  school  emphasizing  the  major  indus- 
tries of  its  own  constituency.  If  we  cannot  do  this,  there 
is  the  greatest  danger  that  our  delinquent  children  may  be 
turned  out  of  our  semi-reformatory  industrial  schools  really 
better  fitted  for  useful  Uves  than  are  most  of  the  children 
of  normal  citizens.  There  is  evidence  that  the  public 
already  has  its  attention  upon  this  point 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  IN  HIGH  SCHOOLS        57 

I  have  a  vision  of  a  system  of  secondary  education  so 
correlated  with  the  grades  upon  the  one  hand  and  with  the 
activities  of  Hfe  upon  the  other  that  the  children  need  not 
declare  in  advance  what  their  occupation  is  to  be.  The 
man  who  enters  college  ought  to  know  definitely  what  he 
purposes  to  do,  but  the  secondary  school  should  be  a  place 
wherein  the  boy  can  find  himself  and  pick  his  place  in  the 
world  of  active  affairs.  I  would  have  not  one  but  many 
courses  out  of  this  school  leading  into  life  —  some  into  the 
trades,  some  into  business,  some  into  the  professions,  and 
some  into  college  for  those  who  know  what  they  want  of 
higher  education,  why  they  need  it,  and,  moreover,  who 
have  the  ambition  to  get  it.  There  are  too  many  young 
men  to-day  who  leave  the  high  school  because  it  does  not 
seem  to  be  fitting  them  for  the  life  they  have  the  itching 
ambition  to  begin;  and  there  are  too  many  other  young 
men  in  the  universities  who  are  shot  there  out  of  the  high 
school  much  as  the  wind  stacker  delivers  straw. 

This  is  because  we  have  not  yet  fully  realized  the  com- 
plexity of  the  educational  process,  and  it  is  because  we 
have  not  yet  sufficiently  provided  in  our  system  for  all  the 
needs  of  all  the  people. 

Now  the  secondary  schools,  if  they  exist  for  anything, 
are  to  administer  universal  education  and  make  it  apply  to 
as  many  individuals  as  possible.  They  reach  and  touch 
the  boy  and  the  girl  while  yet  members  of  the  father's 
household,  and  I  protest  with  all  the  earnestness  of  which 
I  am  capable  that  their  business  is  to  teach  these  people 
to  get  ready  to  live,  and  that  without  reference  to  college 
admission.  It  is  a  mistake  to  assume  that  the  matter  and 
sequence  that  best  fit  for  college  also  constitute  the  best 
preparation  for  life  without  a  college  course,  and  that  high 
school  which  allows  the  requirements  of  the  accredited  list 


58  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

to  dominate  its  policy  is  headed  wrong  in  its  philosophy  of 
universal  education. 

It  is  for  the  secondary  schools  and  the  grades  that  lead 
up  to  them  to  serve  the  people  in  their  needs  —  all  the 
people  in  all  their  needs  for  everyday  life.  Anything  less 
than  this  is  that  much  short  of  universal  education.  The 
exceptional  man  is  well  served  already,  and  his  way  is  likely 
to  be  paved  with  all  the  helps  that  are  good  for  him.  In 
any  event,  the  spirit  of  the  times  is  not  to  overlook  the 
common  man  whom  also  the  Lord  loveth. 

Can  the  high  schools  turn  their  backs  upon  vocational 
training  of  any  major  kind  and  say,  "  Let  the  trade  schools 
do  that "  }  Dare  they  do  it }  If  they  do,  as  sure  as  time 
goes  on,  the  people  will  establish  industrial  schools  of  their 
own  that  meet  their  needs  directly,  and  we  have  lost  our 
hold  forever  upon  the  industrial  class  which  represents  the 
mass  ;  we  have  lost  forever  the  opportunity  to  hold  to- 
gether productive  industry  and  the  higher  mental  life,  and 
when  our  high  schools  have  lost  this  opportunity,  they  are 
public  schools  no  longer ;  the  masses  will  withdraw  their 
money  as  well  as  their  attendance,  our  boasted  public 
school  system  will  exist  only  for  the  few,  and  our  people 
will  have  broken  into  two  classes,  the  leisure  and  the 
industrial,  each  schooled  in  its  own  fashion,  the  two  inevi- 
tably drifting  farther  and  farther  apart,  generation  by  gen- 
eration. 

Within  a  year  two  famous  British  educators  on  two 
separate  occasions  said  to  me  in  substance  in  my  office  • 
"  Does  America  fully  understand  her  two  stupendous 
advantages  t  "  I  asked,  "  What  are  they  } "  and  they  said, 
"Your  people  are  yet  a  homogeneous  people,  and  your 
secondary  schools  are  public  schools." 

What  they  meant  was  that  we  have  yet  no  peasant  class, 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  IN  HIGH   SCHOOLS        59 

but  are  one  people,  and  our  secondary  schools,  being 
creatures  of  the  public  and  not  of  a  church  or  of  any  other 
class,  could  minister  fully  and  freely  to  the  public  need  as 
they  saw  fit. 

This  great  problem  goes  far  back  and  beyond  the  definite 
question  of  industrial  education.  If  we  are  to  make  the 
most  of  our  opportunity,  we  must  truly  educate  all  the 
people  in  ways  that  they  will  regard  as  useful  to  themselves 
and  that  experience  will  prove  to  be  beneficial  to  the  race 
as  a  whole.  If  we  cannot  do  this,  we  shall  break  in  two  at 
some  point,  and  once  apart  we  shall  never  reunite.  It  is 
not  easy,  because  the  problem  is  complicated  and  there 
are  few  precedents.     But  it  is  worth  the  while. 

Fortunately  the  precedents  are  all  encouraging.  The 
state  universities  have  shown  that  no  natural  antagonism 
exists  between  the  different  interests  of  men  as  represented 
on  higher  educational  levels.  The  high  school  is  yet  nearer 
to  the  people,  and  all  attempts  that  have  been  made  there 
to  meet  real  and  living  needs  have  met  with  instant  suc- 
cess, and  that,  too,  without  injury  to  the  higher  educational 
spirit  and  ideals  but  vastly  to  their  betterment. 

There  are  great  times  just  ahead  if  we  are  wise.  The 
people  will  give  of  their  substance  freely  if  the  education 
of  their  young  can  be  made  useful.  If  we  can  do  this,  then 
can  we  add  to  industry  both  culture  and  refinement ;  then 
will  great  souls  arise  from  all  the  walks  of  life  and  we  shall 
be  one  people.  I  beg  you,  my  fellow-teachers,  to  study 
this  problem  as  your  rehgion.  The  fates  have  put  it  upon 
you  to  settle.  A  generation  or  two  and  it  will  be  too  late. 
And  as  you  settle  it  do  not  shirk  labor,  do  not  fly  to  the 
separate  school  because  it  is  easier,  but  treasure  as  your  life, 
I  beg  of  you,  the  universality,  the  integrity,  and  the  unity 
of  the  American  educational  system. 


CHAPTER   III 

nn)USTRIAL  EDUCATION  A  PHASE  OF  THE  PROBLEM 
OF  UNIVERSAL  EDUCATION  i 

To  see  to  it  that  no  individual  shall  be  obliged  to  choose  between 
an  education  without  a  vocation  and  a  vocation  without  an  education. 

No  system  of  education,  however  good  in  itself,  can 
claim  to  be  or  hope  to  become  universal  if  it  does  not 
touch  and  benefit  all  classes  of  men  and  all  legitimate 
branches  of  their  activity,  both  industrial  and  non-indus- 
trial, vocational  and  non-vocational.  I  take  it  that  univer- 
sal education  means  exactly  what  it  says  —  the  education 
of  all  sorts  of  men  for  all  sorts  of  purposes  and  in  all  sorts 
of  subjects  that  can  contribute  to  the  efficiency  of  the 
individual  in  a  professional  way  or  awake  and  develop  the 
best  that  was  born  into  him  as  a  human  being. 

Looked  at  in  this  broad  way,  industrial  education  does 
not  differ  logically  from  any  other  form  of  professional 
training  that  requires  a  large  body  of  highly  specialized 
knowledge.  Nor  do  industrial  people  as  such  necessarily 
constitute  a  class  by  themselves,  but  are  men  like  other 
men  who  love  and  hate,  who  earn  and  spend,  who  read 
and  think,  and  act  and  vote,  and  do  any  and  all  other  acts 
which  may  be  performed  by  any  other  citizen.  Now  all  of 
this  leads  me  to  maintain  the  thesis  that  industrial  educa- 
tion is  not  a  thing  apart,  but  is  only  a  phase,  albeit  an  im- 
portant phase,  of  our  general  system  of  universal  education, 

»  See  also  address  at  the  superintendents'  section  of  the  N.  E.  A.  at  Chicago,  February 
•5, 1909- 

60 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  UNIVERSAL  EDUCATION        6l 

a  thesis  that  is  more  plausible  when  we  remember  that 
every  man  needs  two  educations,  one  that  is  vocational  and 
one  that  is  not  —  one  that  will  fit  him  to  work  and  one 
that  will  fit  him  to  live.  When  we  remember  that  there  is 
less  difference  between  industry  and  occupation  than  we 
once  assumed;  when  we  remember  that  ninety  per  cent 
of  the  people  follow  industrial  pursuits  and  will  continue 
to  do  so  ;  when  we  remember  that  all  major  industries,  like 
other  essential  activities,  must  go  on  in  the  future  as  in 
the  past,  even  though  every  man  in  the  community  were  a 
college  graduate,  and  when  we  remember  that  it  is  for  the 
public  good  that  these  major  industries  be  developed  and 
occupied  by  educated  men,  surely  this  position  is  not  un- 
reasonable. 

All  parties  are  agreed  that  in  order  to  secure  a  fair  de- 
gree of  efficiency  some  sort  of  specialized  instruction  should 
be  given  in  industrial  pursuits.  The  old  apprentice  sys- 
tem has  passed  away,  and  the  work  of  instruction  for  indus- 
trial efficiency  seems  to  be  thrown  upon  the  schools.  It  is 
a  new  problem,  and  they  appear  not  to  know  quite  what  to 
do  with  it.  It  is  perfectly  clear  that  industrial  education 
calls  for  new  and  different  courses  of  instruction  from 
those  designed  to  fit  for  non-industrial  pursuits.  The  only 
question  is  whether  these  specialized  courses  of  instruction 
constitute  a  part  of  our  public  school  duty  or  whether  the 
peculiar  educational  needs  of  industry  and  of  industrial 
people  may  be  left  to  take  care  of  themselves.  In  dis- 
cussing industrial  education,  as  with  all  other  forms  of 
education,  it  must  always  be  remembered  that  we  are 
dealing  with  the  man  as  well  as  with  the  craftsman,  and 
I  use  the  term  craftsman  in  its  broadest  sense  to  cover  the 
work  of  the  lawyer  as  well  as  that  of  the  farmer. 

And  this  man ;  what  of  him  ?     Surely  he  is  a  factor  in  the 


62  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

case.  He  is  something  more  than  a  farmer  or  a  doctor  or 
a  lawyer,  or  else  he  is  something  less  than  a  man.  His 
education  is  not  to  be  limited  by  the  demands  of  his  voca- 
tion. We  have  too  many  of  that  kind  already  in  all  pro- 
fessions constituting  a  kind  of  museum  of  educated  parrots 
that  go  through  their  daily  stunts,  each  considering  himself 
highly  educated  and  all  other  men  at  best  merely  trained. 

Yes,  the  man  himself,  the  human  element  in  the  case, 
must  be  educated.  And  if  he  be  truly  educated  he  will 
be  trained  in  some  profession  —  no  matter  what  —  and  he 
will  also  be  trained  outside  of  his  profession  so  that  he  will 
be  bigger  than  the  means  whereby  he  earns  his  bread  and 
butter ;  and  this  applies  to  all  men  of  all  vocations,  for 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  learned  profession  except  in  the 
sense  that  all  the  major  activities  are  learned. 

So  I  lay  down  the  proposition  that  whether  the  educa- 
tion be  industrial  or  otherwise  vocational,  it  is  but  a  part, 
though  an  essential  part,  of  the  education  of  a  man,  and 
that  all  these  specialized  forms  of  vocational  instruction 
are  but  different  phases  of  our  problem  of  universal 
education,  to  which  we  as  a  people  are  committed. 

Like  all  great  purposes  actuating  the  masses  of  men,  the 
development  of  this  idea  of  universal  education  has  been  a 
growth.  It  began  with  the  conviction  that  in  justice  to  the 
individual  and  for  the  safety  of  the  state,  all  men  of  all 
classes  should  possess  at  least  the  rudiments  of  learning, 
and  the  first  step  toward  a  complete  system  of  universal 
education  was  the  free  public  school  wherein  the  child  of  the 
rich  and  of  the  poor  alike,  whether  genius  or  dullard,  may 
learn  to  read  and  to  write  and  to  reason,  which  after  all  are 
fundamental  to  all  education.  Our  elementary  education 
is  universal  in  the  sense  that  it  applies  to  all  the  children 
of  all  classes  of  people  and  without  discrimination. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  UNIVERSAL  EDUCATION        63 

This  marked  a  new  epoch  in  the  life  of  industrial  people, 
because  hitherto  the  policy  of  the  world  had  been  to  keep 
working  folk  ignorant,  apparently  in  order  that  they  might 
remain  contented  with  the  hard  lot  to  which  Providence  had 
presumably  assigned  them;  because,  forsooth,  must  there 
not  be  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water  ?  So  were  laid 
the  foundations  for  a  system  of  universal  education  —  uni- 
versal in  the  sense  that  it  applied  to  all  men  —  affording 
not  only  the  rudiments  of  learning  but  opening  a  highway 
even  to  the  college  and  the  learned  professions,  and 
many  escaped  thereby  from  a  hard  life  of  toil. 

But  no  scheme  of  education  is  truly  universal  or  can  hope 
to  become  so  until  it  not  only  touches  and  uplifts  all  classes 
of  men  but  also  touches  and  uplifts  their  industries  as 
well ;  for  it  is  not  expedient  that  men  should  desert  indus- 
try as  soon  as  they  are  educated,  but  rather  that  they  should 
remain  and  apply  their  education  to  the  development  of  the 
industries,  that  the  public  may  be  better  served  and  the 
economic  balance  of  things  be  not  disturbed  by  the  evolution 
of  an  educational  system  aiming  to  become  universal. 

The  need  of  attention  at  this  point  became  evident,  es- 
pecially to  industrial  people,  and  on  July  2,  1862,  Abraham 
Lincoln  affixed  his  signature  to  the  most  far-reaching  bit 
of  federal  legislation  ever  enacted.  I  refer  to  the  Land 
Grant  Act,  whereby  there  was  provided  for  each  state  of  the 
Union  "at  least  one  college  whose  leading  object  shall  be, 
without  excluding  other  scientific  and  classical  studies  .  .  . 
to  teach  such  branches  of  learning  as  are  related  to  agri- 
culture and  the  mechanic  arts  ...  in  order  to  promote 
the  liberal  and  practical  education  of  the  industrial  classes 
in  the  several  pursuits  and  professions  of  life."  Here  we 
have  the  whole  scheme  not  only  of  industrial  but  of  uni- 
versal education  in  a  nutshell  —  a  liberal  and  practical  ed- 


64  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

ucation  without  excluding  scientific  and  classical  studies : 
what  a  text  for  an  educational  discourse ! 

Building  on  this  broadest  of  educational  foundations, 
most  of  the  states  have  established  industrial  education  on 
a  new  basis,  and  some  of  them  have  so  combined  and  in- 
terwoven it  with  other  forms  of  education  that  none  can 
tell  where  the  one  leaves  off  and  the  other  begins.  These 
are  the  state  universities  whose  lead  in  this  respect  is  be- 
ing rapidly  followed  by  institutions  not  on  the  land  grant 
foundation,  until  now  we  can  truly  say  that  on  college  levels 
to-day  industrial  education  is  not  a  thing  apart,  but  is  an 
integral  portion  of  the  great  educational  effort  by  which 
the  people  of  a  commonwealth  seek  to  so  educate  all  classes 
of  men  as  to  develop  at  the  same  time  not  only  their  intel- 
lect, their  literature,  and  their  art,  but  their  industries,  their 
occupations,  and  their  activities  generally.  This  is  univer- 
sal education  in  its  fullest  sense. 

Our  elementary  education,  therefore,  is  universal  in  a 
sufficient  sense  for  its  purpose,  and  our  university  education 
is  rapidly  becoming  universal  in  its  broadest  sense,  because 
here  all  subjects  are  studied  and  taught  and  all  occupations 
and  industries  are  represented  and  made  to  flourish  in  a 
common  atmosphere  of  higher  education. 

But  as  yet  we  have  no  system  of  secondary  education 
that  can  be  called  universal,  and  until  the  matter  is  settled 
at  this  point  and  settled  right  our  system  is  weak  at  its 
most  important  level,  because  it  is  our  secondary  education 
that  touches  our  people  during  their  formative  period  and 
that  really  reaches  the  masses  in  such  a  way  as  to  be  truly 
universal  in  extent. 

I  say  that  our  secondary  education  is  not  yet  universal. 
True,  the  high  schools  are  open  to  all  who  have  finished 
the  grades,  but  they  do  not  offer  to  most  classes  of  people 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   UNIVERSAL  EDUCATION        65 

that  instruction  which  is  a  preparation  for  their  lives  and 
which  the  needs  of  the  times  and  the  impulse  of  the 
people  demand. 

The  high  schools  took  their  cue  originally  from  the  old- 
time  academies,  which  were  training  schools  for  classical 
colleges.  Since  then  primary  education  has  become  uni- 
versal because  it  involved  nothing  but  opening  the  schools 
to  all  the  people  free  of  tuition.  The  education  of  the 
colleges  has  become  or  is  rapidly  becoming  universal  be- 
cause the  people  demand  that  the  benefits  of  higher  edu- 
cation shall  not  be  limited  to  a  few  favored  occupations 
and  those  who  follow  them  —  all  upon  the  ground  that 
such  a  course  would  be  pernicious,  because  against  the 
public  welfare. 

The  same  influences  are  beginning  to  work  in  our 
high  schools,  which  are  moving  in  the  wake  of  the 
colleges,  it  seems  to  me,  in  a  way  that  is  wholly  com- 
mendable and  that  needs  only  to  be  accelerated  and  not 
retarded. 

The  high  schools  are  schools  of  the  people,  and  in  re- 
sponse to  their  demand  they  have  added  to  the  old-time 
classical  courses  those  in  modern  science,  in  manual  train- 
ing, in  household  science  and,  indeed,  many  are  now  adding 
agriculture,  stenography,  telegraphy,  bookkeeping,  type 
setting  and  a  list  of  vocational  courses  almost  too  long  to 
be  mentioned,  all  without  prejudice  but  vastly  to  the  en- 
richment of  the  old-time  courses  of  study. 

So  the  high  schools  are  rapidly  following  in  the  lead  of 
the  colleges,  and  if  matters  go  on  as  they  are  now  drifting 
in  some  of  our  best  schools,  it  will  not  be  long  until,  in  re- 
sponse to  public  demand  and  common  sense,  we  shall  have 
a  complete  system  of  universal  education  in  the  largest 
sense  of  the  term  and  of  all  grades,  from  the  elementary 


66  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

schools  upward,  in  which  men  and  women  of  all  kinds  and 
preferences  will  be  able  to  get  that  education  which  will 
not  only  fit  them  for  life  but  fit  them  to  live.  In  the  name 
of  progress  let  this  good  work  go  on. 

There  are  but  three  influences,  it  seems  to  me,  that  can 
interfere  with  the  proper  evolution  of  the  high  school.  They 
may  be  outhned  as  follows  :  — 

1.  The  movement  in  certain  quarters  for  separate  indus- 
trial schools  —  agricultural  schools  in  the  country  and 
trade  schools  in  the  city  —  quite  independent  of  the  high 
school  system,  which  is  assumed  to  be  indifferent  if  not  an- 
tagonistic to  industrial  life. 

2.  The  attitude  of  a  few  remaining  exponents  of  the  old 
idea  that  schools  should  teach  nothing  that  by  any  possi- 
bility could  be  put  to  any  manner  of  use. 

3.  The  difficulty  involved  on  the  part  of  the  high  schools 
in  adding  not  only  to  their  educational  purpose  but  to  their 
courses  of  study,  their  equipment,  and  their  teaching  force, 
with  suflficient  rapidity  to  meet  the  new  demands  and  mold 
the  whole  into  an  educational  unity  without  such  delay  as 
shall  make  the  claim  seem  true  that  after  all  the  high 
schools  have  no  real  desire  to  serve  the  people  in  their  in- 
dustrial activities  and  will  do  no  more  than  is  necessary  to 
half  satisfy  what  they  regard  as  an  irrational  public  demand. 
Thus  the  high  schools  are  put  at  a  disadvantage  at  this 
most  difficult  period  in  their  evolution,  particularly  as 
teachers  are  yet  to  be  made,  even  while  these  new  ideals 
are  to  be  fitted  into  and  made  a  part  of  our  permanent  edu- 
cational policies. 

These  considerations  are  worth  reviewing  at  the  present 
juncture,  because  what  the  high  schools  need  is  time,  and 
this  is  the  element  in  the  case  least  Hkely  to  be  afforded. 
The  activity  of  certain  educators  in  favor  of  separate  agri- 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  UNIVERSAL  EDUCATION        67 

cultural  schools  of  one  kind  or  another,  and  what  I  am 
bound  to  call  the  selfish  influence  of  certain  commercial  in- 
terests demanding  city  trade  schools  to  teach  the  sort  of 
handicraft  which  will  produce  skilled  workmen  in  the 
shortest  possible  time  and  best  enable  us  to  meet  foreign 
or  other  competition  in  manufactured  articles  —  this  activity 
and  this  influence  seem  ready  to  sacrifice  almost  anything 
for  immediate  results.  This  American  edition  of  the  Ger- 
man peasant  school  idea  is  a  most  dangerous  because  a 
most  insidious  and  powerful  menace  to  the  right  develop- 
ment of  the  American  high  school,  which  is  or  may  be  the 
most  unique  educational  institution  on  earth,  and  which 
will  constitute,  if  it  can  rightly  develop,  the  key  to  the  ad- 
vantageous position  which  America  ought  to  occupy  both 
socially,  politically,  and  economically,  and  which  she  can 
occupy  if  she  is  farsighted  enough  at  this  point  and  at 
this  time. 

If  present  tendencies  can  go  on  unhampered  it  will  not 
be  long  until  every  community  can  have  its  high  school 
which  will  reflect  with  a  fair  degree  of  accuracy  its  major 
industries  and  do  it  in  the  light  of  the  world's  knowledge 
and  of  the  world's  ideals.  Such  schools  will  turn  out  men 
and  women  ready  to  do  the  world's  work  and  to  think  the 
world's  thoughts  as  well  as  to  dream  the  world's  dreams  and 
share  in  its  ambitions.  If  we  combine  our  energies,  we  can 
have  such  schools  in  America  wherein  every  young  man  and 
every  young  woman  can  secure  an  education  that  is  at  once 
useful  and  cultural,  and  that,  too,  within  driving  distance  of 
the  father's  door.  If  we  unite  our  educational  energies, 
we  can  do  this,  but  we  cannot  do  it  in  separate  schools. 

We  can  combine  the  vocational  and  the  non-vocational 
in  our  high  schools  if  we  will,  and  each  be  better  for  the 
other,  and  all  things  considered,  I  must  earnestly  advocate 


68  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

the  taking  over  of  our  industrial  education  in  all  its  forms 
into  the  existing  system  of  secondary  schools,  seeing  to  it 
that  one  fourth  the  time  of  every  pupil  is  devoted  to  some- 
thing vocational,  sor):>ething  industrial,  if  you  please,  and 
no  industry  is  too  common  to  use  for  this  purpose.  It  is 
the  common  things  of  life  that  are  fundamental,  and  it  is 
through  them  that  we  teach  life  itself. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  bring  all  occiipations  and  industries 
into  our  schools ;  some  are  not  well  adapted  to  academic 
conditions,  but  it  is  necessary  that  we  bring  in  a  goodly  va- 
riety of  what  may  be  called  the  major  activities,  industrial 
and  non-industrial,  in  order  that  life  shall  be  taught  in  a  va- 
riety of  its  forms  and  that  the  boy  shall  have  a  reasonable 
chance  for  choice. 

Trade  schools  —  would  you  have  them  ?  By  all  means, 
but  I  would  have  them  as  a  part  of  the  secondary  school 
system.  Agricultural  schools  ?  Yes,  but  as  departments  of 
the  high  school.  Cooking  schools  ?  Yes,  and  more :  I  would 
have  schools  of  household  affairs,  but  I  would  have  them 
as  integral  parts  of  the  high  school.  Schools  of  stenography 
and  typewriting  ?  Yes,  but  I  would  not  disconnect  them 
from  the  high  school  any  more  than  I  would  cut  off  from 
womankind  the  girl  who  needs  perhaps  for  a  time,  perhaps 
always,  to  earn  her  own  money. 

In  brief,  there  is  no  class  of  occupation  that  is  followed 
by  large  masses  of  people  that  I  would  not  bring  into  the 
high  school  and  teach  as  fully  as  circumstances  would  per- 
mit,  and  I  would  compel  every  student  to  devote  not  less 
than  one  fourth  and  not  more  than  one  half  of  his  time  to 
these  occupational  lines. 

I  have  said  that  a  second  influence  operating  to  restrain 
the  high  schools  from  moving  in  this  matter  as  fast  as  con- 
ditions require  is  the  remnant  of  an  old  academic  belief 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  UNIVERSAL  EDUCATION        69 

that  the  purpose  of  schools  is  to  "  make  men,"  whatever 
that  may  be,  as  distinct  from  making  men  ready  for  life. 
These  are  they  who  would  teach  nothing  that  could  by  any 
means  be  put  to  any  sort  of  use.  With  them  education  is 
a  luxury,  not  a  necessity ;  a  kind  of  holy  thing  that  evapo- 
rates or  in  some  way  loses  its  essence  when  put  to  common 
uses  or  into  the  hands  of  the  masses  of  men. 

These  are  they  who  are  always  careful  to  speak  of  in- 
dustrial education  as  "training,"  using  a  term  whose 
meaning  is  understood  from  its  frequent  application  to 
horses  and  dogs. 

To  such  let  me  say  that  the  thing  which  all  men  every- 
where now  demand,  whatever  their  vocation  or  means  of 
livehhood,  is  not  training  merely,  but  education^  and  they 
mean  by  that  such  contact  and  intimacy  with  the  world's 
stock  of  knowledge  as  shall  first  of  all  develop  the  indus- 
try, and  second,  but  not  secondarily,  develop  also  the  man. 

Thinking  men  now  know  that,  education  or  no  education, 
culture  or  no  culture,  whatever  the  grade  of  civilization  we 
may  evolve,  certain  f  uYidamental  industries  must  still  go  on. 
Moreover,  they  know  that  if  these  fundamental  industries 
are  to  be  well  conducted  and  our  natural  resources  devel- 
oped, these  activities  must  be  in  the  hands  of  capable 
men  ;  yes,  of  educated  men,  for  industry,  like  every  other 
activity  of  man,  is  capable  of  development  by  means  of 
orderly  knowledge  and  trained  minds. 

These  thinking  people  know,  too,  that  men  of  capacity 
cannot  be  found  to  develop  these  fundamentals  except  they 
may  also  themselves  partake  of  the  blessings  of  life  and 
the  full  fruits  of  our  civilization.  They  know  that  the  days 
of  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water,  as  such  —  con- 
demned to  a  life  of  drudgery  —  are  over  on  this  earth 
wherever  civilization  exists,  and  that  education,  like  reli- 


70  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

gion,  must  somewhat  rapidly  readjust  itself  to  new  condi- 
tions and  prepare  to  help  the  common  average  man  to  lead 
a  life  that  is  both  useful  to  the  community  and  a  satisfac- 
tion to  himself. 

The  aristocracy  of  education,  like  the  aristocracy  of  reli- 
gion, whereby  a  few  were  saved  while  the  many  groaned, 
is  over,  and  education,  like  religion,  must  help  the  common 
man  to  meet  and  solve  the  common  issues  of  life  better  than 
they  have  ever  been  met  and  solved  before  — hence  indus- 
trial education ;  hence  vocational  education;  hence  univer- 
sal education. 

These  good  people  who  shy  at  the  term  industrial  edu- 
cation are  remnants  of  a  past  condition  when  educators  and 
others  entertained  that  old-time  and  curious  conception  of 
industry,  whereby  industrial  people  were  assumed  to  remain 
uneducated  and  were  by  common  consent  assigned  to  a 
social  position  of  natural  inferiority,  as  if  a  farmer  or  me- 
chanic, for  example,  acquired  by  his  daily  life  a  kind  of 
toxic  poison  that  not  only  destroyed  his  better  faculties  but 
was  likely  to  exude  and  soil  or  injure  others. 

Let  me  call  the  attention  of  these  good  people  to  the  fact 
that,  whatever  their  social  status,  the  industrial  people  hold 
the  balance  of  power  politically  and  socially,  for  they  con- 
stitute ninety  per  cent  of  the  population,  and  that  for  all 
practical  purposes,  and  in  the  last  analysis,  they  are  the 
people,  and  their  education,  whatever  it  is,  will  really  consti- 
tute our  system  just  as  their  numbers  will  largely  dominate 
our  affairs  generally  and  fix  the  status  of  our  civilization. 

The  colleges  learned  long  ago  that  to  meet  modern  needs 
they  must  afford  every  man  two  educations :  one,  technical, 
to  meet  his  business  needs  and  make  him  an  efficient  mem- 
ber of  society,  but  which  would  tend  to  narrow  him  as  a 
man ;  the  other  non-vocational,  which  has  no  money-making 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   UNIVERSAL  EDUCATION        71 

power,  but  whose  effect  is  to  liberalize  and  broaden  the 
man  by  attracting  his  interests  and  widening  his  knowledge 
outside  the  field  wherein  he  gains  his  livelihood. 

The  high  schools  must  learn  the  same  lesson,  and  the 
sooner  they  do  so  the  better  for  all  interests.  Therefore 
these  high  schools  that  are  introducing  the  industrial  are 
developing  in  the  right  way.  The  high  schools  are  not 
preparatory  schools  for  college.  They  are  preeminently  the 
schools  wherein  the  people  are  fitted  for  life.  Where  one 
man  is  educated  in  college,  twenty  will  get  all  their  prepa- 
ration in  high  schools.  The  high  school,  therefore,  is  the 
place  wherein  the  boy  shall  find  himself  to  the  end  that  if 
he  goes  to  college  he  will  have  upon  matriculation  clear 
ideas  about  what  he  intends  to  do,  and  if  he  does  not,  he 
can  go  out  from  the  high  school  at  once  and  take  some  use- 
ful part  in  the  world's  work.  The  large  number  of  high 
school  men,  even  graduates,  who  have  no  plans  and  more 
than  all  no  fitness,  preparation,  or  inclination,  for  any  sort 
of  useful  activity,  is  a  pathetic  and  dangerous  fact — pa- 
thetic, because  so  much  good  material  has  been  wasted ; 
dangerous,  because  the  high  schools  must  either  change 
their  ideals  and  introduce  the  industrial  freely,  or  the  in- 
dustrial masses  will  found  other  schools  of  their  own  that 
will  meet  their  needs  as  they  have  been  met  on  college 
levels,  but  as  they  have  not  yet  been  met  in  secondary 
grades  where  the  masses  go. 

The  colleges  have  learned  that  it  is  not  necessary  to 
absorb  all  the  time  of  a  student  in  order  to  turn  out  an  effi- 
cient man  vocationally.  Much  less  is  it  necessary  in  sec- 
ondary schools.  On  college  levels  from  one  half  to  two 
thirds  of  the  student's  time  suffices  for  the  vocational,  and 
when  we  learn  better  how  to  teach,  results  can  doubtless 
be  attained  with  still  less,  leaving  a  generous  amount  of 


72  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

time  for  the  pursuit  of  non-vocational  and  therefore  of 
liberalizing  courses,  for  the  effect  of  a  course  of  study, 
whether  narrowing  or  broadening,  depends  less  upon  the 
subject-matter  than  upon  the  attitude  of  the  student  and 
the  purpose  for  which  he  takes  the  course.  Chemistry  to 
the  farmer  is  a  professional  subject;  to  the  journalist  or 
the  lawyer  it  is  non-professional  and  liberalizing. 

If  we  will  honestly  take  into  our  high  schools  as  we  have 
taken  into  our  universities  all  the  major  activities,  splitting 
no  hairs  as  between  the  industrial  and  the  professional, 
for  no  man  can  define  the  difference  so  imperceptibly  do 
they  shade  the  one  into  the  other  —  if  we  will  take  them 
all  into  the  high  school  as  we  have  already  taken  them 
into  the  universities,  and  carry  them  along  together,  the 
vocational  and  the  non-vocational  side  by  side,  day  after 
day,  from  first  to  last,  so  the  boy  is  never  free  from  either, 
then  will  all  our  educational  necessities  be  met  and  we 
shall  have  gained  a  goodly  number  of  substantial  achieve- 
ments, prominent  among  which  I  would  mention  the  fol- 
lowing :  — 

1.  One  fourth  of  the  time  of  the  boy  or  girl  could  be 
devoted  to  vocational  work  in  class  room  or  laboratory 
throughout  the  course. 

2.  This  would  turn  out  every  boy  with  some  skill  in  some 
branch  of  the  world's  work,  and  do  away  with  that  large 
and  growing  number  of  young  high  school  graduates  who 
are  fitted  for  nothing  and  are  good  for  nothing  in  particular. 

3.  It  would  attract  the  attention  of  the  boy  to  self-sup- 
porting activity  before  he  loses  his  natural  ambition  by  too 
much  schooling  with  no  initiative. 

4.  It  would  turn  out  girls  with  some  training  in  house- 
hold affairs,  and  those  who  desired  it  in  such  occupations  as 
women  follow  for  self-support. 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  UNIVERSAL  EDUCATION        7^ 

5.  It  would  vastly  uplift  most  occupations  and  all  of 
the  more  ordinary  industries  by  bringing  into  their  practice 
the  benefit  of  trained  minds  and  methods. 

6.  It  can  do  all  this  and  still  leave  three  fourths  of  the 
time  for  the  acquisition  of  those  non-vocational  lines  of 
knowledge  which  all  men  and  women  need,  because  they 
are  human  beings  getting  ready  to  live  in  a  most  interest- 
ing world. 

7.  In  this  way,  we  should  have  a  single  system  of  edu- 
cation under  a  single  management,  but  giving  to  all  young 
men  and  women  really  two  educations  :  one  that  is  voca- 
tional, fitting  them  to  be  self-supporting  and  useful,  the 
other  non-vocational  and  looking  to  their  own  develop- 
ment. 

Expensive  ?  Not  more  so  than  to  have  it  done  in  sep- 
arate schools,  surely.  It  will  be  done  somehow,  and  the 
question  now  is,  will  the  high  schools  really  rise  to  their 
opportunity  and  secure  through  themselves  a  real  system 
of  universal  education,  or  are  they  to  lose  their  chance  and 
are  we  to  have  in  the  end  not  a  real  but  only  a  patchwork 
imitation  of  a  system  of  universal  education  ? 

1  am  well  aware  that  all  this  will  be  held  by  some  as 
a  lowering  of  standards  and  a  degrading  of  education  by 
commercializing  it.  Against  this  conclusion  I  protest 
most  emphatically.  Does  it  degrade  a  thing  to  use  it.? 
Does  it  degrade  religion  to  uplift  the  fallen  or  to  sustain 
the  masses  of  men  from  falling  ?  Is  education  a  luxury 
to  be  restricted  to  a  few  favored  f ortunates,  or  is  it  a  power 
to  uplift  and  sustain  and  develop  all  men  ? 

Are  you  afraid  to  educate  the  ditch  digger  ?  Is  the  edu- 
cation of  the  gentleman  too  good  for  him  ?  Are  the  facts 
of  history  too  profound  or  the  satisfaction  of  knowledge 
too  precious  to  be  the  common  property  of  man  ?     Does 


74  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

it  make  my  satisfaction  less  when  it  makes  his  more,  or 
are  we  afraid  that  he  will  climb  out  of  the  ditch  if  he  is 
enlightened  ?  There  is  no  danger  of  that.  I  have  dug 
ditch  and  laid  tile  every  month  of  the  year,  and  that  since 
I  was  a  college  graduate,  and  I  am  ready  to  do  it  again. 
I  am  ready  to  do  my  share  of  the  world's  work ;  yes,  of 
the  world's  dirty  work.  It  was  Colonel  Waring  who 
cleaned  up  New  York  City.  It  was  the  educated  engi- 
neer who  made  a  sanitary  Cuba.  The  educated  man  does 
anything  that  needs  to  be  done  to  get  results.  It  is  the 
uneducated  or  the  badly  educated  who  fails  to  comprehend 
the  eternal  balance  of  things. 

I  desire  to  call  attention  to  one  more  phase  of  our  prob- 
lem ;  to  what  may  be  called  our  leisure  asset.  There  are 
two  leisure  classes,  one  small  and  unimportant,  the  other 
large  and  important.  The  first  consists  of  the  idle  rich 
who  by  accident  were  born  after  their  fathers,  and  who 
intend  to  live  a  parasitic  existence,  paying  for  their  needs 
with  other  people's  money.  They  are  altogether  useless. 
It  matters  little  how  they  are  educated,  and  the  sooner  they 
die  off  the  better  for  the  world.  They  do  not  think ;  they 
do  not  act ;  they  only  vegetate  and  glitter ;  they  do  not 
enter  into  the  discussion  here.  The  wealthy  who  do  not 
belong  to  this  class  are  too  busy  for  leisure. 

The  other  leisure  class  is  the  great  industrial  mass,  who, 
after  all,  own  and  control  about  all  the  useful  leisure  in  the 
world.  The  minister  has  no  leisure.  The  teacher  has  no 
leisure.  The  lawyer,  the  leader  everywhere,  has  no  lei- 
sure. What  he  does  he  does  under  pressure  and  because 
he  must. 

But  the  farmer,  the  craftsman,  the  industrialist  generally, 
labors  only  in  the  daylight  hours  and  for  a  portion  of  his 
time.    What  he  does  with  the  balance  of  his  waking  energies 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  UNIVERSAL  EDUCATION        75 

is  of  the  utmost  concern.  Here  is  the  great  racial  asset, 
both  social  and  psychical ;  both  economic  and  political. 

If  this  great  mass  of  men,  constituting  all  but  the  degen- 
erates, can  be  properly  educated,  the  racial  asset  of  their 
leisure  moments  will  in  the  end  be  tremendous.  It  is  this 
mass  and  what  it  thinks  and  does  in  its  leisure  hours,  either 
blindly  or  intelligently,  that  will  ultimately  fix  the  trend  of 
our  development  and  the  limits  of  our  achievements,  not 
only  in  politics  and  in  business  but  in  literature  and  art  as 
well.  There  is  no  reason  why  the  craftsman  should  not 
be  also  a  connoisseur  in  lines  outside  his  personal  and  daily 
activities.  It  is  better,  therefore,  that  our  common  people 
be  educated  and  educated  broadly. 

Moreover,  it  is  out  of  this  mass  that  leaders  arise,  and  if 
their  education  be  sound,  then  will  our  leaders  be  wise  and 
safe.  You  cannot  longer  maintain  an  educated  aristocracy. 
There  will  be  but  one  aristocracy,  and  that  will  be  the  aris- 
tocracy of  personal  achievement ;  and  if  we  do  not  want 
the  world  entirely  commercialized,  we  must  so  merge  our 
industrial  education  into  our  general  system  as  to  have  in 
the  end  not  a  mass  of  separate  schools  with  distracting 
aims  and  purposes,  but  a  single  system  of  education  serv- 
ing all  classes  and  all  interests.  It  is  the  only  influence 
that  will  preserve  a  homogeneous  people. 

In  thus  amalgamating  the  vocational  and  the  non-voca- 
tional, I  would  like  to  say  a  word  for  what  might  be  called 
the  parallel  system  as  distinct  from  the  stratified.  That  is, 
I  would  have  a  boy  from  his  first  day  in  the  high  school  to 
his  last  have  to  do  with  both  the  vocational  and  the  non- 
vocational.  I  would  have  him  every  day  take  stock  of 
things  vocational  in  terms  of  world  values.  I  would  have 
him  devote  a  full  fourth  of  his  time  to  what  will  bring  him 
earning  power,  to  be  used  for  that  purpose  if  he  needs  it 


76  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

and  to  give  him  an  independent  spirit  if  he  does  not  need 
it.  Every  man  is  a  better  man  if  he  feels  the  power  to 
earn  his  way,  whether  he  needs  to  do  it  or  not. 

Do  you  say  that  this  will  so  cut  into  his  time  as  to 
prevent  his  getting  an  all-round  education  ?  Then  I  say 
that  he  will  never  get  an  all-round  education  anyway; 
that  the  most  he  knows  at  forty  will  be  learned  out  of 
school,  and  that  the  business  of  the  school  is  to  give  him  a 
good  start. 

I  beg,  too,  for  a  reform  in  the  idea  that  a  course  is 
framed  mainly  for  the  one  who  graduates.  If  the  voca- 
tional and  the  non-vocational  are  properly  paralleled,  the 
course  is  good  from  whatever  point  it  is  left,  and  whenever 
or  wherever  abandoned  it  has  taught  the  student  the  proper 
balance  between  industry  and  life  ;  between  the  means  and 
the  ends  of  existence. 

All  this  will  take  time,  because  it  means  to  some  extent 
the  readjustment  of  ideals,  the  addition  of  new  courses  of 
study,  and  of  new  materials  and  methods  of  instruction.  It 
means  the  making  of  a  new  class  of  teachers  who  must 
largely  train  themselves  by  a  generation  of  experience.  It 
means  the  making  of  a  more  complicated  system  of  in- 
struction than  has  ever  been  undertaken  —  a  system  as 
complicated  as  American  democratic  life. 

But  it  is  worth  the  while,  for  nothing  better  is  possible. 
It  is  easier,  of  course,  to  short-circuit  the  matter  by  assent- 
ing to  the  separation  of  industry  and  education,  but  no 
race  need  hope  for  supremacy  nor  for  the  evolution  of  its 
best  till  it  combines  industry  and  education,  which  belong 
together  in  the  schools  as  they  do  now  and  always  must  in 
life. 

So  I  say  to  the  high  schools  —  Do  not  wait  for  approved 
courses  of  study,  nor  for  the  production  of  skilled  teachers. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  UNIVERSAL   EDUCATION        77 

Go  ahead  and  do  the  best  you  can.  An  honest  effort  is 
half  the  battle,  and  it  is  worth  more  now  than  it  will  ever 
be  again.  Do  not  hesitate  till  methods  are  marked  out. 
If  you  do  that,  you  and  the  cause  are  lost,  for  the  separate 
industrial  school  will  surely  come.  We  know  the  ideal  — 
an  educated  American  in  all  the  activities  of  life.  Let  us 
go  ahead  and  produce  him  and  mend  our  methods  later  on. 
Education  is  no  longer  a  luxury.  It  has  become  a  neces- 
sity for  the  doing  of  the  world's  work.  It  is  no  longer  for 
the  edification  of  the  few ;  it  is  for  the  satisfaction  of  the 
many;  and  whether  we  regard  it  as  industrial  or  non-in- 
dustrial ;  as  contributing  to  the  efficiency  of  men  or  to  their 
elevation  in  civilized  society ;  however  this  or  any  other 
educational  problem  is  regarded,  they  are  all  but  phases 
of  our  general  and  stupendous  problem  of  universal  educa- 
tion, the  best  guide  to  whose  solution  is  to  teach  in  a  unified 
system  of  schools  all  the  things  that  the  community  needs 
to  know,  and  let  the  individual  take  his  choice  concerning 
the  vocational  subjects. 


CHAPTER   IV 
THE  EDUCATIVE  VALUE  OF  LABOR 

The  daily  doing  of  needful  things  with  regularity  and  efficiency 
is  half  of  a  liberal  education. 

I  YIELD  the  palm  to  none  in  my  appreciation  of  what 
education  can  do  for  an  individual,  for  a  profession,  and  for 
a  community,  but  in  many  respects  we  are  school  mad. 
Every  child  needs  as  much  as  he  can  get  of  the  knowledge 
of  the  world  and  of  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients  to  help  him 
to  meet  the  issues  of  Ufe,  but  he  needs  also  personal  touch 
and  experience  with  the  world  of  to-day,  that  he  may  know 
how  to  meet  and  to  deal  with  the  world  of  to-morrow  when 
he  will  be  a  man  with  maximum  responsibilities. 

I  have  said  that  in  our  thirst  for  information  we  have 
become  school  mad.  I  say  it  because  we  undertake  to 
absorb  practically  every  moment  of  the  time  of  the  child  in 
his  academic  work,  most  of  it  with  books  dealing  either 
with  ancient  affairs  or  with  abstract  information  which, 
good  though  it  is,  cannot  constitute  a  sufficient  preparation 
for  a  life  in  the  present  and  with  the  concrete.  When  the 
high  school  girl  must  choose  between  her  music  and  her 
high  school  course,  then  something  is  wrong,  and  the  evi- 
dent remedy  is  to  absorb  less  of  her  time  in  her  studies, 
leaving  time  for  music,  or  else  to  count  the  music  as  a  part 
of  her  course.  When  she  is  so  busy  with  her  studies  that 
she  has  no  time  to  perform  any  part  of  the  necessary  labor 
of  the  home,  then  something  is  wrong,  and  the  remedy  is 

78 


THE  EDUCATIVE  VALUE   OF  LABOR  79 

to  require  less  of  her  time  in  the  school,  or  else  to  take 
household  affairs  into  the  course. 

If  the  schools  as  now  organized  could  have  their  way 
with  a  boy,  they  would  use  all  his  time  in  the  schoolroom 
and  get  him  through  the  grades  and  the  high  school  at 
seventeen  or  eighteen,  then  on  into  college  for  four  years, 
with  three  more  for  a  doctor's  degree,  expecting  to  turn 
him  out  at  twenty-four  or  twenty-five  an  educated  man. 

Educated  in  what  ?  Educated,  no  doubt,  and  highly  so, 
in  that  world  of  knowledge  which  is  sufficiently  old  and 
well-ordered  to  have  found  a  place  in  books.  Educated, 
too,  perhaps,  in  methods  of  acquiring  new  knowledge  by 
reading  old  literature  from  a  new  angle,  or  by  a  first-hand 
study  of  some  great  natural  law  or  some  little-known 
organism. 

All  these  things  he  may  know  and  do,  but  as  to  that 
great  moving,  whirling  mass  of  mind  and  matter  that  we 
call  the  world,  where  the  concrete  and  the  everlasting  pres- 
ent are  uppermost;  where  man  rubs  up  against  man  —  in 
this  relation  he  is  a  child,  with  a  child's  outlook  and  with 
that  queer  combination  of  timidity  and  of  ignorant  assur- 
ance that  mark  the  child's  first  contact  with  the  world 
about  him.  Such  is  the  penalty  we  pay  for  that  form  of 
education  which  is  almost  exclusively  academic. 

Now  the  difficulty  with  this  man  is  not  that  he  knows 
too  much.  It  is  that  he  has  experienced  too  little.  It  is 
not  that  he  has  lived  too  much  in  the  past ;  it  is  that  he 
has  not  lived  enough  in  the  present.  It  is  not  that  he  is 
too  familiar  with  the  abstract,  but  it  is  that  he  has  not  dealt 
enough  with  the  concrete.  It  is  not  that  he  is  too  adept 
at  generalization  ;  it  is  that  he  is  unfamiliar  with  the  par- 
ticular. It  is  not  that  he  knows  too  much  of  books ;  it  is 
that  he  knows  too  little  of  men.     It  is  not  that  he  knows 


8o  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

too  much  of  the  history  of  the  race ;  it  is  that  he  has  not 
himself  met  and  conquered  the  personal  issues  of  life. 

What  is  it  that  such  a  man  has  really  missed?  The 
answer  can  be  framed  in  many  terms.  We  may  say  that 
he  has  been  taken  out  of  his  natural  environment,  and  that 
is  true.  While  other  young  men  have  been  plowing  and 
planting  and  reaping,  buying  and  selling  and  building,  he 
has  been  looking  on  and  going  to  school.  While  others 
have  been  earning,  he  has  been  spending.  While  others 
have  become  independent  and  self-supporting,  he  has  been 
dependent.  While  others  have  married  and  established 
families,  he  is  unmarried  or  perhaps  is  being  supported  in 
college  by  the  labor  of  his  wife.  While  others  have  devel- 
oped in  experience  as  in  stature  from  children  into  men, 
he  has  remained  undeveloped  on  4:he  experience  side  —  a 
man  with  the  outlook  of  a  child.  What  wonder  that  so 
many  of  our  brightest  young  men  scent  this  thing  from 
afar  and  get  out  of  the  school  at  a  deplorably  early  age  ! 
What  wonder  that  of  those  who  remain  so  many  conclude 
that  after  all  it  is  better  to  go  on  learning  than  to  begin 
doing  and  drift  ultimately  and  necessarily  into  minor  posi- 
tions. This  is  of  special  detriment  to  the  teaching  pro- 
fession, because  of  all  men  the  teacher  should  have  had 
much  experience  with  the  world. 

To  realize  still  better  what  this  man  has  lost  who  has 
lived  inside  the  schoolroom  till  he  was  twenty-five,  let  us 
examine  a  little  more  in  particular  into  the  life  of  young 
men  outside  the  schoolroom,  with  a  view  of  better  under- 
standing the  educative  value  of  that  form  of  work  which 
we  call  labor.  The  boy  on  the  farm,  for  example,  is  told 
that  it  is  his  job  to  feed  the  pigs,  and  he  knows  by  this 
that  if  he  neglects  or  shirks  the  duty  the  pigs  will  tell  of  it 
and  he  will  be  called  to  account.     There  will  be  no  ques- 


THE  EDUCATIVE  VALUE  OF  LABOR      8l 

tion  of  a  "  passing  grade  "  or  a  "  conditioned  examination." 
There  is  no  way  to  partly  do  the  job,  nor  can  he  escape  by 
cribbing.  The  only  crib  in  the  case  is  the  corn  crib,  and 
to  this  he  must  go,  not  once  or  even  twice,  but  daily  and 
regularly,  for  the  pigs  will  tell  on  him  every  time  he  shirks, 
for  no  "  point  of  honor  "  is  involved  with  them.  To  the 
teacher  who  has  had  this  experience  in  boyhood  the  cheap 
excuses  and  the  petty  deceptions  so  often  indulged  in  by 
the  schoolboy  to  avoid  meeting  squarely  the  issue  of  daily 
duties,  to  him  the  contrast  is  keen,  and  to  him  is  laid  bare 
the  fatal  defect  in  attempting  to  educate  solely  by  the 
schoolroom  method. 

When  these  pigs  are  ready  for  market,  the  boy  will  see 
them  sold,  and  if  the  father  is  what  he  should  be,  one  of 
them  belongs  to  the  boy,  and  so  will  the  proceeds  thereof. 
Now  this  is  a  better  way  of  getting  money  than  to  run 
errands  or  to  have  an  allowance,  because  the  process  is 
natural  and  highly  educative.  All  this  is  the  experience 
of  a  boy  on  the  farm  before  he  is  twelve  years  old,  and  I 
know  many  a  boy  who  is  buying  and  selling  and  dealing 
with  men  in  standard  values  by  the  time  he  is  fourteen. 

This  boy,  if  he  is  good  for  anything,  will  never  rest  well 
o'  nights  till  he  has  harnessed  a  horse  —  for  did  he  not 
break  a  yoke  of  calves  of  his  own  ?  —  and  he  is  never  com- 
pletely happy  till  he  has  driven  a  double  team.  Perhaps 
there  is  no  development  in  a  boy  when  for  the  first  time  he 
handles  the  lines  and  directs  the  energies  of  somewhere 
from  a  ton  and  a  half  to  two  tons  of  horse  flesh  !  I  know 
by  experience  as  well  as  by  observ^ation  that  he  is  about 
six  inches  taller  afterwards,  and  I  believe  he  has  grown 
more  inside  than  he  has  grown  outside.  This  boy  soon 
"makes  a  hand  ";  that  is,  does  a  man's  work,  and  I  want 
to  say  that  not  again  until  his  wedding  day  will  this  boy  be 


82  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

SO  happy  and  so  consequential  as  when  for  the  first  time 
he  is  recognized  as  taking  a  man's  place  in  the  world. 
Soon  after  this  the  girls  begin  to  call  him  mister,  and  then 
his  cup  of  satisfaction  is  completely  filled.  After  that  he 
is  a  man. 

Is  all  this  trivial  and  unimportant  ?  It  is  involved,  I  tell 
you,  in  the  making  of  a  man,  and  some  time,  somewhere, 
this  experience  must  come,  or  the  boy  will  never  be  a  real 
man;  for,  like  the  young  thing  of  any  other  species,  the 
boy  must  test  his  environment  day  by  day,  and  grow  in 
strength  and  experience  as  that  environment  broadens. 

The  daily  doing  of  needful  things  with  regularity  and 
efficiency  is  in  itself  highly  educative.  It  constitutes  a 
good  and  a  necessary  part  of  a  liberal  education,  and  with- 
out it  no  system  of  education  is  safe.  It  teaches,  first  of 
all,  personal  responsibility  for  things  to  be  accomplished, 
whereby  the  child  learns  the  useful  lesson  that  things  do 
not  "just  happen,"  neither  do  they  "do  themselves." 

The  getting  of  results,  often  against  obstacles,  and  the 
bringing  about  of  what  would  not  otherwise  have  come  to 
pass,  so  that  the  child  can  say  with  satisfaction,  "  I  did 
that"  —  this,  too,  is  educative.  It  may  only  be  finishing 
the  planting  before  rain  sets  in  perhaps  for  days ;  it  may 
be  only  the  getting  in  of  the  last  load  of  hay  or  grain  be- 
fore the  threatened  storm;  it  may  be  the  breaking  in  of  a 
spirited  horse  and  the  curbing  of  his  nature  to  a  superior 
will ;  it  may  be  the  feeding  off  of  a  bunch  of  steers  or 
even  of  pigs  and  their  marketing — it  may  be  only  these 
things,  but  they  are  the  things  that  men  do,  and  if  the  boy 
can  measure  himself  with  men  a  part  of  the  time,  it  is 
better  than  to  measure  himself  with  boys  all  of  the  time. 
The  writer  counts  now  as  his  most  blessed  privilege  and 
the  most  valuable  part  of  his  early  training  the  experience 


THE  EDUCATIVE  VALUE  OF  LABOR  83 

of  an  only  son  who  planned  and  executed  day  by  day  for 
many  years  side  by  side  with  the  father.  The  companion- 
ship of  these  two,  boy  and  man,  as  they  planned  together 
to  surmount  their  small  difficulties,  —  small  indeed,  but 
they  were  the  issues  of  life  to  them, — all  this  was,  as  I 
count  it  now,  the  most  truly  valuable  part  of  my  prepa- 
ration for  life.  Such  an  experience  cannot  be  compared 
with  what  is  learned  from  books.  The  two  are  different. 
The  important  point  is  that  neither  can  replace  the  other^ 
and  both  are  necessary. 

When  we  take  a  boy  out  of  his  family  life,  off  the  farm 
or  out  of  the  shop,  and  absorb  all  of  his  time  in  the  school- 
room, we  owe  him  something  in  compensation.  Do  we 
say  that  manual  labor  is  depressing,  and  that  it  tends  to 
produce  dullness  and  stolidity }  That  is  only  when,  it  is 
abused.  That  is  only  when  there  is  too  much  of  it.  That 
is  only  when  it  is  unaccompanied  by  intelligent  plan  and 
purpose.  That  is  only  when,  year  after  year,  the  same  dull 
routine  of  toil  is  endured  as  a  necessity  of  existence,  with 
no  high  purpose  and  no  ray  of  hope  ahead. 

But  to  the  child  manual  effort  is  easy,  yes,  instinctive. 
It  is  for  this  reason  highly  stimulating  and  therefore  edu- 
cative. When  a  new  thing  is  done  well  for  the  first  time 
by  the  young,  a  sense  of  achievement  and  growing  power 
possesses  the  doer,  and  manual  accomplishments  are  among 
the  earliest  of  possible  achievements. 

I  cannot,  therefore,  overrate  the  educational  value  of 
manual  operations,  particularly  as  they  develop  into  pro- 
ductive labor  with  financial  recompense.  A  boy  sets  out 
to  make  a  box.  It  only  means  the  nailing  together  of  five 
pieces  of  board,  with  a  sixth  for  a  cover.  It  seems  simple, 
but  trial  shows  that  the  boards  must  all  be  square,  or  the 
box  will  gap  at  the  joints;  and  the  attempt  proves  the 


84  EDUCATION   FOR  EFFICIENCY 

problem  not  so  simple  as  it  looks.  The  box  does  gap  at 
the  corners.  It  gaps  badly,  and  the  boy  realizes  what  he 
would  not  have  believed  before  —  how  difficult  it  is,  after 
all,  to  saw  off  a  board  so  that  all  the  angles  are  right 
angles.  If  he  tries  twenty  times  before  he  succeeds,  what 
matter  ?  Only  a  little  lumber  and  a  few  nails  are  wasted, 
but  the  boy  is  saved,  for  he  has  learned  how  easy  is  failure, 
and  how  difficult  is  success,  even  in  so  simple  a  matter  as 
making  a  box.  He  has  had  the  experience  of  failure,  of 
repeated  trial,  and  of  ultimate  success.  Such  a  boy  will 
never  be  discouraged  later  on  by  ordinary  difficulty,  be- 
cause he  has  had  the  experience  of  winning  over  failure. 
The  boy  who  has  not  had  this  experience  till  he  begins 
business  as  a  man  will  not  know  how  to  take  the  unex- 
pected difficulties  that  beset  what  would  seem  to  be  the 
simplest  case.  It  is  better  that  the  boy  get  this  experience 
at  the  expense  of  a  little  lumber  and  a  few  nails  while  yet 
a  child  than  at  his  personal  cost  when  he  gets  to  be  a  man, 
and  is  experimenting  with  himself  and  not  with  a  box. 

I  know  of  no  way  either  in  which  a  just  appreciation  of 
money  values  can  be  so  well  indoctrinated  as  when  the  boy 
as  a  child  earns  some  money  by  means  of  labor,  as  most 
men  must  earn  it  all  their  lives.  Now,  the  need  of  learn- 
ing the  value  of  a  dollar  in  terms  of  hours  of  labor  and 
drops  of  sweat  is  as  incumbent  on  the  child  of  the  rich  as 
on  the  child  of  the  poor ;  and  public  safety  demands  that 
they  both  learn  it  early  in  life.  If  this  nation  ever  goes  to 
ruin,  it  will  be  from  inefficiency  and  unbridled  extrava- 
gance, with  the  corruption  which  so  surely  attends  upon 
non-constructive  existence. 

As  a  means  of  giving  early  experience  with  failure  fol- 
lowed by  success  after  repeated  trial ;  as  a  means  of  teach- 
ing  personal  initiative   and   constructive   activity;    as   a 


THE  EDUCATIVE  VALUE  OF  LABOR      85 

means  of  teaching  the  money  value  of  effort  and  the  en- 
ergy value  of  money,  I  must  unhesitatingly  recommend  a 
course  in  that  kind  of  work  commonly  denominated  labor, 
and  inasmuch  as  labor  cannot  replace  learning,  I  must 
earnestly  urge  the  closest  possible  joining  of  the  two. 

I  would  not,  therefore,  take  a  child  out  of  his  home  envi- 
ronment and  compel  him  to  spend  all  his  time  in  mental 
effort  with  academic  lines  of  work  any  more  than  I  would 
confine  him  to  labor  with  no  chance  at  that  larger  world  of 
knowledge  and  experience  which  is  mostly  recorded  in 
books.  I  would  have  him  do  both  in  order  that  he  may 
grow  somewhat  naturally  into  the  environment  of  men  and 
things  of  his  own  time,  and  also  be  informed  as  to  what 
other  men  and  other  times  have  to  teach. 

Accordingly,  I  propose  that  one  fourth  of  the  time  of 
our  school  children  be  devoted  to  something  distinctly  vo- 
cational, and  the  nearer  it  is  to  manual  labor  the  better,  as 
I  see  it.  In  any  event,  I  would  have  it  deal  with  the  or- 
dinary things  of  life,  not  in  a  dilettante  way,  but  in  genuine 
fashion  as  men  deal  with  the  same  things  in  the  way  of 
business.  Is  one  fourth  of  the  time  too  much  to  devote 
to  this  business  of  growing  a  boy  in  his  environment,  and 
what  I  am  saying  of  boys  is  intended  also  to  be  said  of 
girls,  and  to  apply  to  all  children  who  attend  the  public 
schools } 

Private  schools  may  run  upon  their  own  plan,  but  we 
cannot  afford  the  consequences  of  a  public  school  system 
of  universal  education  that  does  not  recognize  the  funda- 
mental and  substantial  value  of  education  in  terms  of  in- 
dustrial activity  as  well  as  in  terms  of  the  widest  knowledge 
and  the  highest  culture. 

It  is  highly  important  that  we  never  lose  sight  of  our 
real   problem  of  education.     It  is  to  fit  a  generation  of 


86  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

young  people  to  live  a  life  not  like  that  of  Babylon  or 
Egypt,  or  even  Greece  and  Rome  ;  not  like  that  of  Western 
Europe;  not  like  that  of  ours  in  America  to-day,  but  a 
life  such  as  has  never  been  lived  anywhere  on  earth  since 
the  world  began.  The  average  child  that  is  born  to-day 
will  live  his  active  life  from  1930  to  i960  or  1970  or  even 
later. 

Before  that  time  comes,  conditions  here  will  be  greatly 
changed.  Moreover,  there  will  be  new  conditions  on  the 
earth.  Population  has  doubled  thus  far  in  America  once 
every  twenty-five  years.  If  that  ratio  keeps  on,  we  shall 
double  our  population  before  the  children  in  school  to-day 
get  well  started  in  active  life.  Think  what  industrial, 
economic,  and  social  changes  are  involved  therein,  raising 
issues  that  they,  not  we,  must  meet  and  for  which  our  pres- 
ent-day schooling,  I  apprehend,  is  none  too  well  adapted. 
If  the  normal  rate  of  increase  continues,  we  should  have 
180  millions  of  people  in  1935  ;  360  millions  in  i960;  720 
millions  in  1985,  and  1440  millions  in  2010. 

Manifestly,  this  normal  rate  of  increase  cannot  continue 
another  hundred  years,  but  something  will  happen  in  its 
checkings  and  the  children  that  we  are  educating  will  be 
there  when  it  begins  to  happen.  Are  we  schooling  them  so 
as  to  be  ready  to  meet  these  issues }     I  fear  not. 

Accordingly,  I  would  not  educate  them  less  in  the  world's 
past  or  in  whatever  useful  knowledge  has  been  learned,  be- 
cause they  will  need  that  knowledge  for  guidance  in  meet- 
ing new  and  difficult  issues,  but  I  would  educate  them  more 
in  terms  of  the  present  and  in  the  way  of  personal  and  in- 
dependent initiative,  and  above  all  in  the  methods  whereby 
the  individual  takes  his  place  among  men  and  becomes  at 
07ice  and  with  certainty  a  self-supporting  member  of  society. 
The  proper  blending  of  these  two  forms  of  education  is 


THE  EDUCATIVE  VALUE  OF  LABOR  87 

necessary  to  efficiency  ;  moreover,  it  is  the  way  to  prolong 
the  school  period  and  keep  the  boy  in  school. 

I  repeat,  therefore,  my  firm  conviction  that  a  fourth  of 
the  time  of  the  child  in  school  up  to  the  level  of  the  col- 
lege should  be  given  to  vocational  work.  Is  the  objection 
raised  that  there  is  no  time  ?  Why  not  ?  there  is  all  the 
time  there  is.  The  objector  is  thinking  about  that  sacred 
four  years'  high  school  course  and  the  customary  passing 
up  through  the  grades  to  reach  it.  He  is  thinking  about 
graduation.  I  say,  never  mind  graduation,  but  look  out 
for  the  boy  and  preserve  a  proper  balance  in  the  material 
and  the  processes  employed  for  his  educational  develop- 
ment. We  get  our  children  through  the  high  school  too 
early  now.     It  were  better  to  take  more  time. 

It  has  been  assumed  in  the  educational  world  that  vo- 
cational training  is  college  work  to  be  undertaken  after 
graduation  from  high  school,  and  some  would  say  after  a 
non-vocational  undergraduate  course.  Now,  manifestly, 
this  must  apply,  if  at  all,  to  leaders  in  highly  specialized 
callings.  It  cannot  apply  to  the  rank  and  file  nor  to  ordi- 
nary occupations  because  most  men  do  not  and  never  will 
go  to  college.  Most  men  do  not,  but  most  men  might, 
attend  high  school,  though  few  will  graduate,  whatever 
the  conditions  of  graduation  may  be.  I  am  thinking  more 
about  those  who  attend  and  the  conditions  of  attendance 
than  I  am  thinking  of  the  conditions  of  graduation  and  of 
those  who  graduate,  for  they  will  adjust  themselves,  whether 
graduation  takes  four  years  or  five  years,  and  whether  and  on 
whatever  terms  they  enter  college.  What  they  study  and 
do,  day  by  day,  is  of  vastly  more  import  than  when  or  how 
they  graduate  or  whether  they  graduate  at  all. 

That  is  why  I  would  not  take  a  child  entirely  out  of  his 
environment   to   school  him.     That  is  why  I  would  not 


88  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

make  the  acquisition  of  information  the  sole  business  of 
childhood.  That  is  why  I  would  say  that  from  the  first 
day  of  school  till  the  last,  one  fourth  of  the  student's  time 
should  be  devoted  to  the  vocational. 

Having  done  this  as  a  condition  of  attendance,  the  con- 
ditions of  graduation  can  be  modified  so  as  to  give  credit 
for  the  vocational,  or  the  time  can  be  extended  to  five 
years,  if  graduation  is  to  be  based  only  on  academic  work. 
I  care  little  about  that,  but  I  care  everything  for  the  prin- 
ciple and  the  practice  of  uniting  by  the  closest  possible 
educational  bonds,  day  by  day  and  every  day,  the  vocational 
and  the  non-vocational. 

When  we  come  to  do  this,  then  will  the  individual  be 
able  to  take  his  place  among  men  because  he  has  had  the 
experience  of  men.  Whether  he  graduates  or  whether  he 
does  not  graduate  —  whenever  he  leaves  the  school,  if  this 
be  the  plan  of  our  schooling  process,  he  will  have  some 
education  of  the  head  with  some  initiative  of  the  body, 
with  some  promise  of  at  least  fair  efficiency,  with  a  little 
knowledge  that  is  beyond  his  own  horizon. 

It  is  a  sacrifice  for  the  individual  and  a  distinct  loss  to 
the  state  that  so  many  children  feel  obliged  or  are  com- 
pelled by  their  parents  to  leave  school  and  earn  money  to 
support  themselves  and  perhaps  other  members  of  the 
family.  It  has,  however,  its  compensations,  and  I  would 
mitigate  its  evil  as  far  as  may  be  by  taking  over  much  of 
this  work  into  the  educational  field  and  giving  for  it  sub- 
stantial credit  in  the  fraction  that  I  have  indicated  as  being 
properly  devoted  to  the  vocational. 

Does  the  boy  spend  his  summer  and  his  mornings  and 
his  evenings  on  the  farm }  Then  let  him  report  on  what 
he  does  there;  whether  he  helps  to  carry  the  work  and 
business  forward,  or  whether  he  idles  the  time  away.     If 


THE  EDUCATIVE  VALUE  OF  LABOR  89 

the  former,  he  is  entitled  to  credit  for  one  of  the  most 
valuable  components  of  his  education ;  if  the  latter,  then 
let  the  school  set  him  at  something  useful,  something  tend- 
ing toward  the  vocational,  that  no  boy  may  acquire  knowl- 
edge without  thought  of  its  utilization. 

Does  a  boy  sell  papers  after  school?  Why  should  not 
that  fact  be  officially  known  and  recognized  as  a  factor  in 
his  education  ?  Why  should  he  not  report  upon  it  regu- 
larly —  the  number  and  kinds  of  papers  sold,  the  place  and 
the  customers,  whether  regular  or  special,  cost  and  profit, 
together  with  the  disposition  of  the  proceeds  ? 

No  child  of  school  age  should  be  permitted  to  spend  all 
the  day  in  the  factory.  Some  portion  of  the  day  should  be 
devoted  to  academic  training,  but  surely  the  discipline  and 
experiences  of  the  factory  have  educational  value,  and  it 
is  to  the  advantage  of  the  public  that  the  various  activities 
in  which  children  engage  should  be  assessed  by  the  schools 
and  their  relative  educational  value  ascertained. 

Is  all  this  shocking  to  our  educational  sensibilities.^ 
Does  it  smack  too  much  of  the  practical,  of  the  commercial, 
and  of  the  ordinary .?  Is  it  too  much  a  lowering  of  stand- 
ards ?  I  beg  the  objector  to  remember  that  we  are  talking 
about  the  public  school  and  a  system  of  universal  education, 
whereby  the  masses  are  to  get  their  only  preparation  toj 
life  and  the  trend  that  will  fix  their  outlook  forever. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  CULTURE  AIM  IN  EDUCATION 

To  put  thought  into  our  work  and  work  into  our  thought;  to 
idealize  existence  and  to  preserve  these  ideals  in  everyday  life  — 
this,  too,  is  culture. 

1  AM  exceedingly  anxious  not  to  be  misunderstood  with 
respect  to  that  phase  of  education  which  we  call  culture, 
particularly  that  form  of  culture  which  has  had  in  the  past 
and  is  likely  to  have  in  the  future  its  highest  realization 
through  the  study  of  literary  and  philosophical  subjects. 
All  this  I  would  preserve  in  the  education  of  all  classes  of 
people. 

It  is  the  special  purpose  of  these  pages  to  emphasize  a 
high  degree  of  personal  efficiency  as  a  major  aim  in  educa- 
tion, even  if  that  efficiency  is  to  be  exhibited  along  indus- 
trial lines,  and  yet  I  have  no  sympathy  whatever  with  any 
scheme  of  education  that  would  neglect,  much  less  elimi- 
nate, every  time-honored  subject  or  educational  ideal  that 
cannot  demonstrate  its  direct  and  immediate  application  to 
utilitarian  ends. 

There  is  education,  even  culture,  in  technical  training 
properly  undertaken,  but  any  attempt  to  secure  industrial 
efficiency  by  the  sacrifice  of  cultural  subjects  will  defeat  its 
own  ends.  If  in  the  past  we  have  made  the  mistake  of 
assuming  that  a  system  of  education  aiming  chiefly  at 
culture  would  also  secure  efficiency,  that  is  no  reason  for 
now  driving  to  the  other  extreme  and  discarding  the  culture 

90 


THE  CULTURE  AIM  IN  EDUCATION  91 

aim  entirely,  by  confining  our  attention  exclusively  to  the 
so-called  practical.  While  I  would  give  to  the  individual 
large  liberty  of  choice,  I  would  teach  to  all  classes  of  people 
all  forms  of  human  knowledge,  both  those  that  lead  to 
immediate  results  and  those  that  appeal  strongly  to  the 
intellect,  regardless  of  professional  ends,  and  that  is  why, 
as  in  the  next  chapter,  I  have  argued  for  that  unity  in 
education  which  would  neglect  nothing  that  is  really  valu- 
able to  our  civilization  in  the  education  of  the  masses  of 
the  people. 

Not  that  all  will  react  equally  to  the  culture  phase  of 
education,  because  they  will  not.  Some  fail  to  react  even 
when  possessed  of  personal  ambition  to  excel,  just  as  many 
a  man  with  no  voice  essays  to  sing,  to  the  huge  satisfaction 
of  his  own  unattuned  ears  and  to  the  torture  of  all  who 
hear  him.  Even  this  is  laudable  in  the  effort,  and  the  ad- 
vantage to  the  performer  is  doubtless  worth  all  it  costs  to 
the  auditor. 

But  some  will  react,  for  this  reaction  to  the  highest  in- 
tellectual conceptions  is  a  personal  matter  quite  independ- 
ent of  occupation  or  surroundings,  and  we  may  have,  if  we 
will,  farmers  and  mechanics  and  industrial  people  generally 
in  large  numbers  who  appreciate  as  well  as  any  other  class 
of  people  the  highest  mental  processes  of  which  mankind 
is  capable. 

A  great  sculptor  found,  quite  by  accident,  a  little  boy 
molding  images  at  the  mouth  of  an  Illinois  coal  mine.  He 
took  him  to  his  studio,  and  this  miner's  son  is  now  one  of 
the  world's  greatest  masters  in  molding  children's  features 
in  clay.     Here  was  a  genius  born  among  the  masses. 

If  only  the  education  of  industrial  people  be  rightly  bal- 
anced and  the  world  of  culture  be  opened  to  their  vision, 
then  will  their  leisure  hours  be  made  profitable,  for  there 


92  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

is  nothing  about  labor  or  even  about  common  things  that 
makes  impossible  the  loftiest  intellectual  achievements. 

It  was  the  shepherds  on  the  Judean  hills  that  evolved 
the  highest  conception  of  existence  and  of  God  that  has 
ever  been  announced,  —  all  as  they  watched  their  flocks 
under  the  starry  skies  and  wondered  at  the  mystery  of  life ; 
all  in  the  leisure  moments  of  their  needful  employment. 

There  is  another  form  of  culture,  however,  that  I  desire 
especially  to  emphasize,  and  that  is  the  intellectual  devel- 
opment that  comes  to  the  individual  as  the  direct  result  of 
doing  extremely  well  whatever  is  undertaken,  even  though 
it  be  the  most  common  things  of  everyday  life.  It  is  the 
doing  of  common  things  in  shiftless  ways,  through  dire 
necessity,  under  mental  protest  and  with  intellectual  stag- 
nation —  this  is  what  degrades ;  this  is  the  degradation  of 
labor ;  and  it  is  inevitable  to  the  uneducated  and  unskilled 
who  regard  labor  only  as  a  disagreeable  necessity  to  be 
avoided  if  and  whenever  possible. 

But  to  him  who  looks  upon  labor  as  an  opportunity  to 
achieve  results;  to  him  who  sees  the  end  from  the  begin- 
ning and  labors  to  realize  his  ideal;  to  him  who  sees  the 
results  of  his  achievement  as  a  part  of  a  harmonious  whole ; 
to  him  who  develops  the  thing  he  does  until  it  discloses  its 
proportions  and  perhaps  its  beauty  —  to  him  labor  is  ele- 
vating and  the  products  of  his  labor  are  cultural. 

The  farmer  who  produces  the  finest  horse  that  ever  trod 
the  turf  could  not  do  it  unless  he  saw  a  mental  picture  in  ad- 
vance and  dreamed  a  vision  of  what  he  would  produce  gen- 
erations before  he  found  and  brought  together  the  material 
that  would  produce  it.  Is  not  this  art  as  high  as  that  which 
puts  the  picture  on  the  canvas  after  the  farmer  had  pro- 
duced the  original  as  a  living  expression  of  his  own  dream  .^ 
Yea,  verily,  and  if  we  are  to  have  fine  horses,  we  must  first 


THE  CULTURE  AIM  IN  EDUCATION  93 

have  farmer  artists  to  produce  them,  for,  look  you,  the 
horse  existed  before  the  painter  ever  put  him  on  the  can- 
vas. The  original  was  first  of  all  in  the  breeder's  mind  a 
mental  vision.  Yes,  if  we  are  to  have  great  things,  then 
men  of  every  occupation  must  dream  dreams. 

Here  is  a  pile  of  soiled  and  crumpled  linen,  —  a  most  for- 
bidding prospect.  Who  shall  bring  back  again  the  beauty 
of  pattern  and  design  that  are  now  obliterated.?  Not  the 
menial,  surely,  who  sees  only  the  tumbled  pile  of  dirty 
lace.  It  will  be  the  artist,  either  born  or  trained,  who  has 
faith  in  the  prospect  and  who  sees  through  it  all  the  pic- 
ture that  was  in  the  mind  of  the  designer  of  the  patterns 
on  which  the  lacemaker  and  the  weaver  wrought.  This 
person,  with  results  in  mind  in  advance,  by  processes  well 
understood,  removes  the  filth  of  the  street,  and  by  cunning 
method  brings  out  again  the  pattern  and  restores  the  pic- 
ture, just  as  the  sculptor  chips  away  the  outside  stone  that 
the  statue  within  may  appear.  Is  this  menial  employment.? 
Well,  if  it  is,  it  can  never  be  performed  by  a  menial,  be- 
cause no  such  person  can  appreciate  the  possibilities; 
hence  much  bad  sewing  and  worse  cooking ;  hence  clean- 
ing that  does  not  clean,  hence  disease,  unhappiness,  and 
death  with  its  trail  of  wasted  racial  resources. 

Nor  would  I  have  my  reader  overlook  the  fact  that 
the  culture  that  comes  from  doing  in  the  best  way  possible 
the  everyday  and  common  things  of  life  is  the  best  prepa- 
ration possible  for  an  appreciation  of  that  other  culture 
that  is  purely  intellectual,  but  which  can  never  be  properly 
appreciated  except  by  him  who  creates,  who  produces  in 
some  fashion  or  other  the  expression  of  an  ideal,  whether 
the  ideal  be  a  picture  upon  canvas  or  in  stone  ;  or  whether 
it  be  upon  the  landscape  in  the  figure  of  beautiful  trees  and 
flowers  or  of  bountiful  crops ;  whether  the  ideal  be  teeming 


94  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

thoughts  in  words  that  will  never  die,  or  whether  it  be  in 
the  flesh  and  blood  of  an  improved  animal;  whether  it  be 
in  daily  duty  of  a  high  and  unusual  order  or  of  a  common 
and  ordinary  kind,  the  individual  must  be  an  artist  himself 
or  his  culture  is  only  a  veneer. 

To  the  writer,  culture  is  the  best  expression  of  the  high- 
est faculties  of  man,  with  considerable  stress  upon  the 
word  expression.  I  cannot  see  much  culture  in  mere 
ravings  upon  the  achievement  of  others  or  even  in  medi- 
tation upon  lofty  thoughts  and  purposes  unless  that  medita- 
tion leads  to  action. 

Mere  information  is  knowledge  static,  but  the  highest 
product  of  education  is  an  informed  and  disciplined  mind 
at  work.  So  it  seems  to  me  that  real  culture,  the  only 
culture  at  least  worth  aiming  at,  is  the  highest  possible 
exercise  of  the  finest  human  faculties,  working  not  for 
immediate  and  utilitarian  ends,  but  for  the  best  of  which 
the  man  is  capable. 

In  an  earlier  chapter  I  alluded  to  the  fact  that  the  so- 
called  industrial  people  are  in  possession  of  about  all  the 
real  leisure  of  the  race.  This  is  not  only  because  of  their 
overwhelming  numbers,  but  also  from  the  fact  that  outside 
of  working  hours  the  relaxation  of  industrial  people  is  more 
complete  than  is  possible  with  those  of  any  other  class. 

If  the  time  of  this  relaxation  be  not  profitably  employed, 
then  it  is  the  fault  of  the  system  of  education  by  which  the 
industrial  people  are  prepared  for  life.  There  is  nothing 
about  ordinary  employment  that  is  degrading  or  that  is 
adverse  to  the  highest  ideals ;  on  the  contrary  there  is  much 
that  is  of  itself  elevating  and  stimulating  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  very  best  that  is  in  man,  all  of  which  will  be 
evident  to  any  one  who  takes  the  pains  to  study  carefully 
the  character  and  the  personality  of  country  people  or  those 


THE  CULTURE  AIM  IN   EDUCATION  95 

of  any  other  industrial  class  that  has  had  even  a  fair  chance 
at  education  and  a  reasonable  protection  against  over- 
whelming and  wholesale  influences  tending  to  inevitable 
degradation. 

It  is  not  at  all  uncommon  to  find  great  readers  and 
great  thinkers,  even  philosophers,  among  these  people. 
They  have  the  best  opportunities  for  culture  of  any  of 
us  if  only  their  education  affords  them  a  decent  outlook 
upon  the  world,  and  somewhat  broader  than  their  earning 
powers. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  assume  that  all  the  culture  is  in  the 
dreamer's  mind,  or  that  it  is  unattainable  by  him  who  meets 
fairly  the  world's  demands.  One  of  the  things  that  is 
needed  now  is  to  put  more  of  idealism  into  common  things 
and  more  of  culture  into  the  common  men,  whom  the  Lord 
especially  loveth  as  he  made  so  many  of  them. 

The  man  that  builds  my  house  :  shall  he  be  merely  a 
sawer  off  of  boards  and  a  nailer  on  of  shingles,  or  shall  he 
have  and  feel  an  intelligent  sympathy  with  its  architectural 
plan  ?  If  he  have  that  sympathy,  he  will  feel  it  as  he  works, 
and  he  will  unconsciously  put  it  into  his  work,  and  we  shall 
have  the  plan  fully  executed  and  the  house  will  become  a 
habitation  full  of  human  thought  in  its  execution  as  well 
as  in  its  design.  If  he  does  not  feel  that  sympathy  with 
the  ideal  of  the  architect,  he  cannot  put  the  best  into  its 
execution,  and  the  result  will  give  the  impression  of  an  ideal 
badly  realized  and  badly  executed.  The  common  man  may 
not  be  able  to  originate  and  create,  but  if  he  is  properly 
educated,  he  will  feel  the  artistic  thrill  in  execution,  and 
both  he  and  his  work  will  be  the  better  for  it.  This,  too, 
is  culture. 

Why  should  not  and  why  may  not  a  farmer  be  a  student 
of  language  or  of  economics }    Why  may  he  not  be  an 


96  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

authority  upon  some  particular  period  of  ancient  or  modern 
history?  He  has  more  leisure  than  any  other  large  class  of 
independent  people.  His  occupation  should  not  absorb, 
and  indeed  cannot  absorb,  all  his  time.  Moreover,  if  he 
regards  it  rightly  and  is  properly  educated  for  it,  his  farm- 
ing broadens  him  and  does  not  narrow  either  his  outlook 
or  his  mental  capacity. 

Why  should  not  the  craftsman  generally  live  a  part  of 
his  time  in  a  world  other  than  the  one  wherein  and  whereby 
he  earns  his  bread  ?  If  he  does,  two  things  will  happen  : 
first,  he  will  be  a  better  and  a  safer  man  ;  second,  he  will 
drive  his  business  more  successfully  and  his  craftsmanship 
will  be  of  a  higher  order. 

All  this  I  concede  and  most  thoroughly  believe.  The 
great  fault  and  failing  in  our  education  is  that  we  have 
foolishly  assumed  that  education  for  culture's  sake  would 
necessarily  and  mechanically  secure  efficiency,  and  when  it 
did  not,  we  have  again  foolishly  and  hastily  assumed  that 
there  Is  something  about  industrial  activity  that  is  antago- 
nistic if  not  fatal  to  culture.  So  we  have  surrendered  the 
industrial  people  as  such  to  a  hard  life  of  toil,  barren  of 
the  better  things  of  life,  hoping  only  to  deliver  as  many  as 
possible  from  their  fate  as  brands  snatched  from  the  burn- 
ing. Refusing  to  be  delivered  over  in  this  way,  the  indus- 
trial people  are  proceeding  to  set  up  a  system  of  education 
of  their  own  over  against  the  old,  with  the  very  natural 
but  fatal  defect  of  sneering  at  culture,  surrendering  every- 
thing to  present  needs. 

It  is  for  educators  to  come  to  the  rescue  and  put  some- 
thing of  culture  into  industrial  training  or  else  to  graft 
industrial  education  upon  our  school  system,  producing  a 
kind  of  education  adapted  to  turn  out  people  that  are  both 
efficient  and  cultured. 


THE  CULTURE  AIM  IN  EDUCATION  97 

Of  these  two  possible  procedures  the  author  regards  the 
latter  as  in  every  way  preferable  for  reasons  that  will  be 
more  fully  stated  in  the  chapter  on  Educational  Unity,  and 
hence  it  is  that  these  pages  are  addressed  to  those  of  the 
old  school,  hoping  to  induce  the  most  experienced  educa- 
tors to  have  more  regard  for  efficiency  and  thereby  adapt 
our  present  system  of  education  to  the  needs  of  the  indus- 
trial masses.  If  these  pages  were  addressed  to  the  indus- 
trial people  in  the  hope  of  influencing  the  education  that 
they  would  of  themselves  build  up,  then,  under  such  con- 
ditions, I  should  attempt  to  attain  the  same  ends  by  laying 
stress  upon  the  need  and  value  of  culture,  not  as  the  whole 
but  as  an  essential  ingredient  of  the  mixture  that  we  call 
the  educational  course.  Thus  I  should  emphasize  the 
weakest  spot  in  either  system,  as  I  am  now  doing  here. 

I  know  a  small  city  with  great  clay-working  interests 
within  its  borders.  The  call  is  sharp  for  men  sufficiently 
skilled  to  turn  out  crocks  and  jugs,  and  the  best  boys  are 
eager  for  the  time  when  they,  too,  can  go  into  "  the  works  " 
to  earn  money  like  men.  They  will  even  leave  the  school 
in  order  to  do  it.  What  wonder  when  the  school  is  as  silent 
(?«  all  matters  of  clay  working  as  if  the  factory  and  its  in- 
terests were  a  thousand  miles  away  !  Now  if  the  school 
should  recognize  the  facts  of  the  community  life  and  teach 
something  of  ceramics,  even  ever  so  little,  the  inevitable 
consequence  would  be :  — 

1.  An  improvement  in  the  quality  of  crocks  and  jugs  in 
the  factory. 

2.  An  improvement  in  the  men  that  earn  their  living  by 
making  crocks  and  jugs  through  a  higher  and  more  intelli- 
gent purpose  and  through  association  with  a  more  artistic 
product. 

3.  If  a  clay- working  genius  is  ever  born  into  that  com- 


98  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

munity,  —  and  he  will  be  sometime,  —  then  he  will  promptly 
be  discovered  and  will  arise  to  enrich  the  world  of  art  and 
not  be  lost  to  his  generation  and  to  time  in  the  shape  of 
a  genius  making  jugs. 

If  in  addition  to  all  this  the  clay  be  found  to  be  truly 
superior,  then  in  all  likeUhood  there  would  develop  in  time 
a  ceramics  department  in  the  local  school  and  the  little  city 
become  known  the  world  over  like  Limoges  for  its  beauti- 
ful as  well  as  its  useful  product. 

If  the  masses  of  people  as  they  labor,  think  and  also 
dream,  and  if  they  think  and  dream  about  their  labor,  then 
will  their  labor  be  uplifted ;  then  will  the  common  things 
of  life  be  beautified,  and  after  we  have  learned  to  beautify 
the  concrete  that  is  all  about  us,  then  shall  we  know  how 
to  spiritualize  the  ideal  and  the  abstract  that  is  within  us 
through  literature,  philosophy,  and  religion. 

The  readiest  avenue  to  culture  is  by  way  of  the  common 
things  well  done,  and  the  masses  of  men  should  find  in 
their  daily  duties  the  means  of  their  own  uplift.  Culture 
and  refinement  are  not  for  the  few,  they  are  for  the  many  ; 
and  the  road  to  their  achievement  must  not  be  made  nar- 
dow  or  unduly  tortuous. 

The  human  animal  is  what  he  is  because  of  his  inherent 
tendency  upward,  a  tendency  that  is  not  the  peculiar  prop- 
erty of  a  favored  few,  but  the  common  possession  of  the 
mass  of  the  race;  for  our  race,  like  all  others,  owes  its 
progress  not  to  the  few  but  to  the  many. 

I  invite  the  reader  to  let  his  mind  dwell  upon  the  ultimate 
consequences  of  two  different  educational  policies  regard- 
ing this  matter  of  culture :  — 

I.  A  policy  in  which  the  masses  of  men  are  unendowed 
with  the  opportunity  of  idealizing  beyond  the  day  and  its 
duties  as  a  means  or  maintaining  existence.     What  is  the 


THE  CULTURE  AIM ^  IN  EDUCATION  99 

consequence,  first,  to  them  as  individuals,  second,  to  the  state, 
when  we  know  that  one  third  of  their  working  hours  are  em- 
ployed neither  in  labor  nor  in  means  of  self-improvement  ? 

2.  Over  against  this  a  policy  of  education  that  recognizes 
that  a  man  should  be  a  skilled  workman ;  first,  in  order 
that  he  may  be  sure  of  a  livelihood,  and  second,  that  the 
world  may  be  well  provided  with  needful  things ;  but  that 
also  recognizes  that  the  man  himself  is  capable  either  of 
elevation  or  of  degradation  and  that  he  has  on  his  hands 
about  one  third  of  his  tirne  that  will  be  devoted  to  one  or 
the  other,  —  a  policy  further  that  recognizes  that  the  end  and 
aim  of  existence  is  not  to  live  but  to  develop  man  who  is 
made  in  the  image  of  God  with  a  divinity  that  will  assert 
itself  if  it  can. 

With  culture  of  this  sort  I  am  deeply  sympathetic  as  I 
am  out  of  sympathy  with  either  extreme  that  would  on  the 
one  hand  sacrifice  the  man  to  his  daily  toil  or  on  the  other 
hand  proceed  upon  the  unjust  assumption  that  culture  is 
only  for  the  few  who  by  some  fortunate  circumstance  or 
superior  cunning  are  enabled  to  avoid  and  shirk  their 
share  of  the  world's  work  only  because  they  have  found  a 
way  to  eat  by  the  sweat  of  another's  brow. 

So,  culture  is  for  the  race ;  for  the  man  that  God  has 
made  in  his  own  image.  And  who  are  we  to  shape  our 
policies  of  education  upon  the  theory  that  all  men  are  not 
created  equal  ?  It  is  rather  for  us  so  to  shape  these  policies 
that  by  the  process  of  education  every  man  may  realize  in 
his  own  personality  the  full  measure  of  his  capacity  as  en- 
dowed by  the  Creator  and  not  as  limited  by  man. 

With  this  I  hope  that  the  purpose  of  the  writer  will  at 
least  not  be  wholly  misunderstood  and  we  may  pass  to  the 
more  detailed  consideration  of  what  is  involved  in  educa- 
tion for  that  kind  of  efficiency  which  fosters  and  does  not 
sacrifice  culture. 


CHAPTER  VI 
UNITY  IN  EDUCATION! 

I  would  have  it  so  that  in  a  company  of  American  citizens  one 
cannot  tell  by  the  dress,  the  manners,  or  the  speech  what  is  the  occu- 
pation of  the  iiidividual.  To  this  end  let  there  be  few  schools  with 
many  courses,  not  many  schools  with  few  courses. 

No  fact  in  the  educational  situation  is  clearer  than  this 
and  none  is  more  significant :  Industrial  education  is  com- 
ing into  its  own  and  it  is  here  to  stay.  The  ninety-five  per 
cent  are  to  be  educated  and  educated  in  terms  of  their  own 
activities.  This  means  a  well-defined  system  of  education 
in  some  form,  designed  and  administered  for  the  good  of 
the  industrial  masses,  and  of  all  other  classes  as  well.  If 
this  cannot  be  accomplished,  then  each  will  suffer  separately 
and  all  will  suffer  together. 

There  is  a  system  of  college  education  designed  for  the 
development  of  the  industries  and  the  benefit  of  industrial 
people,  but  there  is  no  system  of  secondary  education  so 
designed,  except  that  here  and  there  a  few  feeble  attempts 
have  been  made,  sometimes  in  connection  with  existing 
schools,  sometimes  separately. 

The  existing  system  of  secondary  schools,  though  univer- 
sal in  its  invitation  to  students,  is  built  upon  old-line  policies 
of  restricted  human  interests.  They  cannot  by  these 
policies  appeal  to  the  masses  because  they  ignore  the  im- 
mediate and  personal  interests  of  the  common  man.  If 
any  man  is  to  be  educated,  that  education  must  touch  him 

1  See  also  address  at  the  N.  £.  A.,  Denver,  July  8,  1909. 
100 


UNITY   IN   EDUCAtlON  :     J '.;  V' j;;  ;i<fi^ 

first  of  all  at  the  point  of  his  daily  activities  —  in  general 
his  occupation ;  and  in  order  to  reach  the  industrial  people 
as  such  we  must  have  a  form  of  education  designed  for 
them  and  with  special  reference  to  the  industries  upon 
which  they  depend  for  their  existence. 

This  can  be  attained  in  two  distinctly  different  ways  :  it 
can  be  attained  by  broadening  the  existing  system  to  include 
the  industries  and  the  interests  and  needs  of  industrial  peo- 
ple ;  or  it  can  be  accomplished  by  a  separate  system  of 
schools.  Either  road  is  open  now,  but  both  roads  will  not 
be  open  long. 

If  the  former  alternative  is  to  be  taken,  the  academic 
people  must  take  the  lead,  and  they  must  do  it  now,  for  the 
industrial  people  are  exhibiting  numerous  signs  of  a  dis- 
position to  take  the  matter  into  their  own  hands.  If  they 
do  that,  they  will  establish  separate  schools  of  industry  in 
which  they  will  be  encouraged  by  certain  educators,  and 
we  shall  have  the  spectacle  of  the  ninety-five  per  cent  se- 
ceding from  the  five  per  cent ;  driven  out,  not  by  numbers 
but  by  tradition,  to  the  great  disadvantage  of  both  parties, 
and  the  ultimate  sacrifice  of  a  large  body  of  knowledge 
that  ought  to  come  into  the  possession  and  enrich  the  lives 
of  the  masses  of  men  of  all  occupations. 

So  readily  and  completely  can  the  highly  specialized  in- 
dustrial school  meet  the  immediate  needs  of  industrial  peo- 
ple, and  so  seemingly  complicated  is  the  problem  for  the 
existing  secondary  school  to  expand  and  take  in  the  indus- 
tries, that  it  is  worth  while  to  consider  somewhat  in  detail 
the  ultimate  consequences  of  the  separate  school,  particu- 
larly with  respect  to  agriculture,  with  which  the  writer  is 
most  at  home,  confidently  believing  that  what  is  true  of 
agriculture  and  her  people  is  in  general  true  of  the  other 
industries  and  their  people. 


i«i^;:::r'V:;;Ei>ucATiON  for  efficiency 

Careful  consideration  of  this  matter  at  this  time  is  the 
more  fitting  in  view  of  the  fact  that  federal  legislation  is 
proposed,  whereby  there  should  be  in  every  ten  counties  of 
each  state  (not  more  than  fifteen  or  less  than  five)  ^  an  agri- 
cultural high  school  in  which  should  be  taught  agriculture 
and  domestic  science. 

Now  while  I  have  devoted  my  life  to  agriculture  and  am 
a  partisan  advocate  of  industrial  education,  yet  I  am  a  firm 
believer  in  the  theory  that  the  purpose  of  all  education  of  every 
kind  is  efficiency — efficiency  in  something — in  anything  that 
will  contribute  to  the  sustenance,  the  development,  or  the 
happiness  of  man,  and  I  can  see  no  good  and  sufficient 
reason  why  a  system  aiming  at  a  particular  kind  of 
efficiency  should  be  cut  off  and  separated  from  other  sys- 
tems aiming  at  other  forms  of  efficiency,  particularly  when 
human  life  is  enriched  in  proportion  to  its  capacity  for 
achievement  and  enjoyment.  On  the  contrary,  I  can  see 
many  reasons  why  such  a  separation  is  not  only  unnecessary 
and  undesirable,  but  altogether  inadvisable  and  even  dan- 
gerous. Among  the  many  reasons  that  might  be  given  I 
hastily  and  but  imperfectly  sketch  the  following,  with  spe- 
cial reference  to  agriculture  and  country  people  :  — 

I.  Separate  schools  can  never  be  so  good  as  larger  schools 
with  separate  courses,  ministering  to  a  variety  of  people. 
This  is  axiomatic  for  both  economic  and  pedagogic  reasons. 
No  school  designed  to  minister  to  a  single  class  of  people 
and  to  a  single  group  of  interests  can  ever  be  so  well 
equipped  in  the  fundamental  arts  and  sciences — in  chem- 
istry, biology,  physics,  history,  literature,  economics,  and 
the  so-called  humanities  generally  —  no  such  school  can  be 
so  well  equipped  as  can  one  designed  to  minister  broadly 
to  a  variety  of  interests.     Indeed,  even  if  the  attempt  is 

1  See  draft  of  the  so-called  Davis  Bill 


UNITY  IN  EDUCATION  103 

made  and  a  wide  range  of  subjects  taught,  these  same  sub- 
jects will  of  necessity  be  studied  and  taught  from  a  com- 
paratively narrow  standpoint. 

Every  teacher  knows  and  every  investigator  knows  that 
in  order  to  develop  a  subject  well,  either  for  purposes  of 
instruction  or  of  research,  it  is  necessary  to  establish  and 
maintain  a  favorable  atmosphere  for  that  particular  field  of 
mental  activity,  and  this  atmosphere  is  at  its  best  only  in 
the  presence  of  students  interested  mainly  in  that  subject; 
that  is  to  say,  there  is  no  more  favorable  place  in  which  the 
farmer  may  study  chemistry  than  in  company  with  others, 
not  merely  of  his  own  kind  but  of  those  who  believe  that 
chemistry  is  the  greatest  thing  on  earth. 

There  is  no  better  place  for  the  farmer  to  study  history 
and  to  learn  to  see  himself  as  others  see  him  than  where 
he  studies  history  in  company  with  those  whose  chief  in- 
terest is  not  in  agriculture  or  in  engineering  or  in  teaching, 
)ut  rather  in  history  itself,  by  which  we  study  the  true 
significance  of  world  movements  of  all  classes,  and  come  to 
know  things  past  and  present  in  their  true  perspective. 
That  is  to  say,  every  man  ought  to  be  educated  in  an  at- 
mosphere not  especially  prepared  for  him  and  his  own  kind, 
but  in  an  atmosphere  and  an  environment  much  broader 
than  his  own  interests.  In  this  country,  if  our  democratic 
institutions  are  to  be  preserved,  and  if  our  people  are  to 
labor  together  in  peace  and  understanding,  all  classes  must 
be  educated  in  an  atmosphere  at  least  as  liberal  and  as 
broad  as  all  the  interests  of  any  single  community  can 
make  it. 

In  saying  this,  I  do  not  overlook  the  fact  that  the  sepa- 
rate agricultural  school  has  certain  distinct  advantages. 
They  are  the  same  advantages  that  are  enjoyed  by  any 
other  industrial  school,  or  even  a  theological   seminary, 


104  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

arising  from  the  comparative  simplicity  of  the  educational 
contract  they  undertake.  It  is  a  fact,  of  course,  that  any 
school  founded,  manned,  and  equipped  to  do  a  single  thing 
and  minister  to  a  single  interest  gains  much  in  directness 
by  its  simplified  problem,  and  by  the  direct  methods  it 
naturally  employs.  But  it  loses  in  breadth  and  relative 
value,  as  has  been  indicated,  and  the  best  proof  of  it  is  that 
none  of  the  separate  schools  yet  founded  offer  as  much  even 
in  science  as  the  near-by  high  schools ;  and  what  they  achieve 
in  the  end  is  industrial  training  rather  than  industrial  edu- 
cation—  the  training  of  the  operative  rather  than  the 
education  of  the  citizen. 

Sir  James  Bryce  tells  us  that  the  chief  purpose  in  studying 
history  is  to  throw  light  upon  our  present  action  and  future 
policies,  because  in  a  large  sense  history  does  repeat  itself. 
In  this  connection  it  is  well  to  remind  ourselves  that  agri- 
cultural and  mechanical  education  started  in  this  country  in 
separate  colleges.  This  was  necessary  because  of  the  at- 
titude of  old-line  colleges  of  that  day  concerning  industrial 
education.  But  that  attitude  has  entirely  changed,  and 
to-day  these  two  fundamental  industries  are  strongest,  both 
in  instruction  and  research  —  not  in  the  separate  agricul- 
tural and  mechanical  colleges,  but  in  our  greatest  universi- 
ties, where  all  forms  of  education  are  imparted,  and  where 
American  energy  and  American  citizenship  are  trained  in 
a  cosmopolitan  atmosphere.  Not  only  is  this  true,  but  the 
proportion  of  agricultural  students  who  return  to  the  farm 
is  greater  from  our  universities  than  from  our  separate  ag- 
ricultural colleges,  to  say  nothing  of  the  masses  of  city 
boys  directed  countryward. 

So  I  return  to  my  first  assertion,  viz.:  that  both  from  the 
nature  of  the  case  and  from  the  experience  of  the  past  we 
may   fairly   conclude  that   separate   schools   are   inferior 


UNITY  IN  EDUCATION  105 

schools ;  that  they  lose  more  in  breadth  than  they  gain  in 
directness,  and  can  never  rank  in  real  service  with  that 
other  type  which  ministers  to  many  interests  and  gains 
directness  by  its  distinctly  separate  courses. 

2.  Separate  schools  will  tend  strongly  to  peasantize  the 
farmers.  To  undertake  to  train  the  children  of  farmers  in 
a  system  of  inferior  schools,  such  as  these  must  inevitably 
be,  with  little  knowledge  of  and  less  regard  for  the  affairs 
of  other  people  —  such  an  attempt,  if  it  succeeds,  will 
peasantize  the  farmers  in  America  more  rapidly  and  more 
certainly  than  they  were  peasantized  by  other  causes  in 
Europe  generations  ago. 

To  segregate  any  class  of  people  from  the  common 
mass,  and  to  educate  it  by  itself  and  solely  with  reference 
to  its  own  affairs,  is  to  make  it  narrower  and  more  bigoted, 
generation  by  generation.  It  is  to  substitute  training  for 
education  and  to  breed  distrust  and  hatred  in  the  body 
politic.  Knowledge  is  necessary  to  a  just  appreciation  of 
other  people  and  their  professions  and  mode  of  life ;  with 
this  only  can  a  man  respect  his  own  calling  as  he  ought 
and  love  his  neighbor  as  he  should.  We  cannot  segregate 
and  make  an  educational  cleavage  at  the  line  of  occupations, 
except  to  the  common  peril. 

We  may  one  day  need  the  real  trade  school  in  agricul- 
ture—  the  form  of  instruction  that  aims  at  training  rather 
than  education ;  at  information  rather  than  development ; 
at  mediocrity  and  below  rather  than  mediocrity  and  above. 
This  time  may  come,  but  it  is  not  here  now,  and  our  great- 
est present  need  in  agriculture  is  to  educate  the  landown- 
ers rather  than  their  hired  operatives ;  to  educate  a  class 
of  people  upon  the  land  that  are  in  every  way  the  equal 
of  their  compatriots  in  the  city  or  anywhere  else. 

The  European  peasant  belongs  to  a  class  whose  eco- 


io6  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

nomic  and  social  status  was  fixed  generations  ago  by  a 
variety  of  causes,  mostly  political ;  and  when  the  problem 
of  universal  education  came  up  for  solution  there,  the 
only  way  in  which  the  benefits  of  education  could  be  ap- 
proximately enjoyed  by  all  the  people  was  to  found  a 
system  of  peasant  schools  which  should  secure  results 
with  a  maximum  of  manual  training  and  a  minimum  of 
mental  education.  How  difficult  of  achievement  was  even 
this  step  will  be  appreciated,  for  example,  by  any  student 
of  Irish  industrial  history,  or  by  any  one  who  has  read  Sir 
Horace  Plunkett's  "  Ireland  in  the  New  Century." 

When  these  times  come  to  this  country,  if  they  ever  do, 
I  fervently  hope  that  by  that  time  our  secondary  schools 
will  have  become  so  well  organized  and  so  broadly  equipped 
as  to  handle  the  trade  school  together  with  that  higher 
form  of  industrial  education  which  now  engages  our  atten- 
tion and  which  we  are  trying  now  to  provide. 

The  American  farmer  is  not  a  peasant.  He  has  never 
yet  been  peasantized,  and  I  fervently  hope  he  never  will 
be  peasantized.  He  belongs  mostly  to  the  ancient  and 
honorable  Puritan  stock  descended  from  that  great  middle 
class  of  England  that  came  to  this  country  to  establish  and 
maintain,  not  aristocratic,  but  democratic,  institutions. 
This  is  the  stock  that  first  felled  trees,  then  built  churches 
and  schoolhouses,  and  prepared  to  govern  themselves  and 
to  found  a  nation  and  a  race  whose  institutions  should  rest 
on  the  intelligent  activity  of  all  the  people. 

This  stock  has  never  been  exceeded,  not  only  for  hardi- 
hood and  industry,  but  for  its  appreciation  of  the  benefits 
of  higher  education  and  of  the  better  things  of  life.  This 
people  held  three  things  to  be  cardinal  virtues  —  to  labor, 
to  go  to  church,  and  to  go  to  school.  This  is  the  people 
that   founded    Harvard   College  in  the  wilderness.     It  is 


UNITY  IN  EDUCATION  107 

from  stock  of  this  sort  that  the  typical  American  farmer 
is  descended,  and  I  would  see  him  so  trained  and  so  edu- 
cated as  to  remain  true  to  his  type  for  all  time.  This  will 
require  a  training  and  an  education  that  cannot  be  imparted 
by  any  form  of  European  peasant  school,  however  modified, 
but  it  will  require  the  best  that  modern  human  ingenuity 
can  devise.  This  great  need  will  be  met,  if  it  is  ever  met, 
not  by  old,  but  by  new  systems  of  education,  and  they 
must  be  wrought  out  by  ourselves  to  meet  conditions  here. 

3.  To  educate  the  children  of  different  classes  separately 
is  to  prevent  that  natural  flow  of  individuals  from  one  pro- 
fession into  another  which  is  in  every  way  desirable  both 
for  public  and  for  private  welfare.  If  the  children  of 
farmers  are  systematically  put  into  schools  where  only 
agriculture  is  taught,  many  a  good  lawyer  and  many  a 
good  citizen  will  be  spoiled  to  make  an  indifferent  farmer. 
Boys  do  not  necessarily  inherit  the  father's  profession.  In 
a  very  large  sense  their  natural  faculties  come  from  that 
common  stock  of  human  characters  that  constitute  the 
heritage  of  the  race,  and  the  individual  has  a  right  to  an 
education  that  is  broader  than  the  occupation  and  the  nar- 
row environment  in  which  he  was  born.  True,  he  should 
be  educated  through  and  to  a  large  extent  by  means  of  his 
environment,  because  that  is  the  compass  of  his  own  ex- 
perience ;  but  if  we  educate  him  within  his  environment, 
we  dwarf  him  in  the  process,  and  we  do  not  truly  educate 
him. 

Again,  many  a  boy,  city  born,  has  the  instinct  to  get 
back  to  Nature.  He  should  have  at  least  a  fair  chance  to 
do  so.  Because  a  girl  is  born  in  the  country  is  no  sign  in 
America  that  she  should  be  a  farmer's  wife ;  nor  if  she  is 
born  in  the  city,  is  it  a  sign  that  she  should  not.  My  plea 
is,  in  the  name  of  common  sense  and  American  citizenship, 


lo8  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

educate  all  these  people  together  in  one  school,  with  a 
curriculum  varied  enough  to  fit  for  more  than  one  occupa- 
tion and  more  than  one  mode  of  life,  to  the  end  that  a 
man  may  follow  the  occupation  of  his  father  or  may  change 
it,  as  he  pleases;  but  whether  he  follow  or  whether  he 
change,  he  shall  do  so  intelligently,  and  for  a  reason,  and 
in  either  case  he  shall  have  some  knowledge  of  and  sym- 
pathy with  the  occupation  and  the  life  of  his  neighbor. 

It  is  said  that  if  you  give  a  bright  boy  a  good  education 
and  broad  associations,  he  will  leave  the  farm,  and  the 
only  way  to  keep  him  there  is  to  train  him  to  be  contented 
with  a  humble  life.  That  false  theory  of  education  was 
exploded  long  ago.  Experience  has  abundantly  shown 
that  education  does  not  necessarily  result  in  taking  people 
out  of  the  country  except  when  that  education  is  one-sided 
and  faulty,  as  witness  the  graduates  from  some  of  our 
greatest  universities.  I  have  no  sympathy  with  the  plan 
of  keeping  boys  on  the  farm  by  the  blindfolding  process. 

There  was  a  time,  now  happily  past,  when  the  schools 
ignored  not  only  agriculture  but  all  industry.  Then  un- 
thinking teachers  advised  bright  boys  and  girls  to  "  get  an 
education,  so  they  would  not  have  to  work."  This  sort  of 
doctrine  found  fertile  soil  in  the  young  of  hard-working, 
self-denying  pioneers,  and  it  was  not  strange  that  most 
young  men  who  had  much  contact  with  the  schools  were 
lost  not  only  to  the  farm  but  to  industrial  Hfe.  Then  it 
was  that  men  saw  the  best  of  the  young  crowding  into  pro- 
fessions already  overcrowded,  and  they  noted  with  sorrow 
and  regret  that  education  served  principally  to  draw  men 
away  from  the  useful  callings  and  to  pile  them  up  Uke 
salmon  in  the  spawning  season  where  they  were  not  needed 
or  wanted,  and  where  little  awaited  but  their  own  destruc- 
tion. 


UNITY  IN  EDUCATION  109 

The  country  is,  and  always  will  be,  the  great  breeding 
ground  for  the  nation,  and  the  consequence  of  this  insane 
movement  cityward  of  the  choicest  men  and  minds  could 
have  had  but  one  final  effect  —  to  put  the  brains  in  the 
city  and  the  brawn  in  the  country.  It  was  not  strange 
that  under  conditions  such  as  these  thinking  men  first 
denied  higher  education  to  their  young  because  of  its  in- 
evitable consequences,  and  then  came  to  demand  a  form 
of  education  that  should  really  serve  the  needs  of  indus- 
trial people  as  well  as  those  of  professional  people.  In 
this  way  arose  the  separate  industrial  schools,  but  later 
experience  has  shown  that  one  extreme  is  as  bad  as  the 
other  —  that  industrial  training  without  education  is  but 
little  better  than  education  without  industry,  and  that  both 
will  inevitably  result  in  a  most  unfortunate  sorting  process ; 
both  alike  will  prevent  that  natural  flow  from  one  pro- 
fession or  mode  of  life  to  another,  so  essential  to  meet 
the  natural  desires  of  individuals,  and  to  secure  that  ho- 
mogeneity of  population  without  which  institutions  such 
as  ours  are  not  long  safe,  or  even  possible. 

Though  it  is  true  that  educators  did  not  lead  in  the 
movement  for  industrial  education,  they  were  quick  to  see 
its  significance,  and  to-day  our  greatest  educators  and  our 
best  teachers  are  the  most  earnest  disciples  of  the  doctrine 
that  a  system  of  universal  education  should  fit  for  all  the 
needful  activities  of  a  highly  civilized  race,  to  the  neglect 
of  none  and  to  the  prejudice  of  none. 

This  is  a  stupendous  problem.  Think  of  its  new  com- 
plications !  In  the  old  days  all  that  was  necessary  was  to 
maintain  whatever  schools  could  win  support  and  teach 
the  things  most  easily  taught  without  much  regard  to  the 
consequences.  In  these  days  of  universal  education  we 
must  teach  what  the  world  needs  to  know  for  all  its  essen- 


no  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

tial  activities,  and  we  must  so  conduct  our  schools  as  not 
to  greatly  disturb  the  economic  or  social  balance  of  things ; 
so  conduct  them  that  the  overflow  from  one  occupation  or 
class  shall  be  naturally  compensated  by  a  corresponding 
inflow  of  equally  desirable  individuals  from  others  —  all  of 
which  is  necessary  if  universal  education  is  to  be  an  un- 
mixed blessing. 

4.  Secondary  schools  devoted  solely  to  agriculture 
would  of  necessity  cover  so  much  territory  as  to  require 
the  students  to  board  and  room  away  from  home.  This 
for  students  of  the  high  school  age  is  unthinkable.  Every 
boy  and  every  girl  in  the  early  and  middle  "  teens  "  should 
sleep  every  night  under  the  father's  roof,  and  this  can  be 
if  a  community  establishes  a  single  school  capable  of  cater- 
ing to  all  its  needs,  and  does  not  insist  upon  educating  one 
class  here  and  another  there,  compelling  long  journeys  to 
get  to  the  right  school.  A  single  agricultural  school  in 
ten  counties,  or  in  five  counties,  or  in  one  county — think 
of  it! 

The  problem  of  secondary  education  is  largely  the  prob- 
lem of  the  fourteen-year-old,  and  we  should  never  rest  easy 
till  every  farmer's  boy  and  girl  may  go  to  the  nearest  high 
school,  and  there  find  instruction  not  only  in  agriculture 
but  in  the  other  industries  and  professions  which  concern 
the  community,  and  after  having  lived  the  day  in  an  at- 
mosphere broader  than  their  own  studies  go  home  again 
at  night  to  dream  of  what  a  great  thing  the  world  is  and 
to  wake  with  an  intelligent  appreciation  of  the  place  in  it 
which  they  propose  to  occupy,  for  its  high  school  is  the 
place  in  which  the  individual  should  "  find  himself." 

5.  Agriculture  not  only  needs  contact  with  other  inter- 
ests, but  they  need  contact  with  agriculture.  Every  one 
who  has  had  experience  with  the  introduction  of  agricul- 


UNITY  IN   EDUCATION  III 

ture  into  our  state  universities  will  bear  witness  that  the 
benefits  of  association  are  mutual. 

In  the  university  which  I  have  the  honor  to  serve,  our 
agricultural  students  not  only  get  a  training  and  a  breadth 
of  vision  which  they  could  never  get  in  an  institution  de- 
voted solely  to  their  own  interests,  but  their  presence  on 
the  campus  is  of  distinct  advantage  to  the  other  students. 
Their  directness  and  their  practical  methods  of  work  are 
wholesome  to  the  institution,  at  least  they  are  so  declared 
by  the  non-agricultural  professors  and  students  alike.  In 
every  way,  as  I  see  it,  much  is  lost  and  nothing  gained  by 
separating  the  students  of  different  classes  and  educating 
them  apart,  each  in  the  occupation  of  the  father. 

Nor  would  I  put  all  the  so-called  industries  in  one  class 
of  schools  and  the  professions  in  another.  In  a  large  sense 
all  study  is  professional,  and  in  a  very  large  sense  indeed 
it  is  also  industrial.  Some  portion  of  the  training  of  every 
individual  should  be  industrial,  even  manual,  and  another 
portion  of  the  training  of  every  individual  should  be  dis- 
tinctly mental  until  habits  of  thought  are  formed  quite 
independent  of  material  activity.  For  these  reasons,  which 
are  fundamental,  I  would  not  separate  industry  from  any 
of  our  schools.  I  would  make  it  an  integral  part  of  every 
curriculum,  its  proportion  and  character  depending  upon 
the  prospective  profession  of  the  individual ;  but  above  all 
I  would  have  the  essence  of  all  occupations,  or  at  least  of 
as  many  as  possible,  represented  in  the  same  school. 

My  point  is,  if  all  these  subjects  and  professional  points 
of  view  are  offered  in  the  same  school  with  more  than  one 
avenue  into  life,  then  the  opportunity  is  presented  for  the 
individual  not  only  to  make  a  choice  but  also  to  acquire 
professional  knowledge  and  skill  without  becoming  narrow 
as  a  man.     If  farmers  and  lawyers  and  editors  and  engi- 


112  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

neers  and  artists  and  merchants  are  educated  separately, 
they  will  either  hate  or  despise  each  other,  or  both  ;  if  they 
are  educated  together,  each  will  acquire,  besides  proficiency 
in  his  own  line,  a  sympathy  with  others  that  comes  so 
easily  with  that  partial  knowledge  and  acquaintance  through 
daily  association  in  the  school  age,  and  that  comes  with  so 
much  difficulty  in  any  other  way.  A  farmer  being  educated 
at  a  great  university  is  a  little  different  man  because  law 
and  economics  and  engineering  and  Greek  are  well  taught 
in  neighboring  buildings,  even  though  he  never  take  one 
of  the  courses  laid  down  in  the  catalogue.  The  very  fact 
that  they  are  taught,  and  that  he  associates  with  those  who 
take  them  —  all  this  has  its  effect,  and  in  a  thousand  ways 
a  man  absorbs  something  out  of  every  activity  that  is  going 
on  about  him.  My  point  again  is  that  this  is  the  only  ade- 
quate atmosphere  in  which  to  educate  an  American  citizen, 
whatever  his  occupation  is  to  be. 

6.  To  estabUsh  separate  schools  for  agriculture  is  to 
injure  the  development  of  existing  high  schools.  These 
schools  are  not  "city  schools"  in  any  proper  sense  of  the 
term.  Most  of  them  are  located  in  small  towns  and  vil- 
lages in  a  distinctly  rural  environment.  To  denominate 
all  these  as  "city  schools,"  to  be  devoted  solely  to  the 
interests  of  city  people,  is  as  absurd  as  it  is  unjust  to  them. 
These  schools,  like  all  others,  have  the  natural  right  to 
minister  to  their  constituency,  whatever  it  is.  But  if  agri- 
culture is  to  be  put  off  into  a  separate  system  of  schools 
just  because  the  high  schools  have  not  yet  taught  the  sub- 
ject, it  will  be  easy,  later,  to  cleave  off  another  industrial 
slice,  and  again  another  until  the  remnant  that  remains 
will  be  suited  to  nobody's  need,  unworthy  aUke  of  the 
school  and  the  community  it  was  estabHshed  to  serve; 
and  instead  of  an  organized  system  of  effective  education 


UNITY  IN   EDUCATION  II3 

we  shall  have  an  incongruous  medley  of  separate  and  inde- 
pendent schools,  each  serving  its  little  clientele  in  a  narrow 
way  without  much  regard  to  the  public  good  —  all  of  which 
is  against  the  true  spirit  of  universal  education. 

The  American  high  school  is  a  new  institution.  It  has 
arisen  from  our  determination  to  make  education  truly  uni- 
versal. Now,  universal  education  means  that  all  the  peo- 
ple shall  be  educated,  and  in  such  a  way  that  all  the 
activities  necessary  to  a  highly  civilized  race  may  develop 
and  go  forward.  Only  a  small  per  cent  of  the  people  will 
ever  go  to  college  and  the  experiment  of  universal  education 
will  be  tried  out  in  the  field  of  the  secondary  schools.  These, 
more  than  the  colleges,  will  prove  to  be  the  agencies  by 
which  the  masses  of  the  people  will  get  their  training  and 
their  trend.  For  this  reason  the  future  welfare  of  these 
schools  is  to  be  specially  safeguarded ;  but  every  subject 
and  interest  that  is  taken  away  from  the  high  school  in 
the  present  stage  of  its  development  lessens  by  that  much 
its  power  to  serve  the  community,  and  by  that  much  it  is  a 
menace  to  its  hf  e  and  efficiency  and  a  check  if  not  a  bar  to 
its  further  development. 

7.  Separate  schools  in  agriculture  will  check  the  exten- 
sion of  high  schools  into  country  communities.  High 
schools  started  first  in  the  cities,  it  is  true,  but  they  are 
making  their  way  rapidly  out  into  the  country,  a  tendency 
that  is  to  be  encouraged,  more  especially  as  they  are 
showing  a  remarkable  disposition  to  respond  to  their 
environment.  If  the  interests  are  not  divided,  it  is  entirely 
possible  for  any  community,  without  going  beyond  driving 
limits,  to  throw  all  its  energies  into  a  school  of  secondary 
grade  and  make  it  capable  of  truly  reflecting  all  its  varied 
interests.  This  has  been  found  impossible  where  sec- 
ondary  education    is    primarily   under    ecclesiastical    in- 


114  EDUCATION  FOR   EFFICIENCY 

fluence ;  it  will  also  be  found  impossible  if  interests  are 
to  be  divided  and  as  many  separate  schools  established 
as  there  are  interests  to  be  served ;  but  if  they  will  stay 
together  and  solve  their  problems  as  a  unit,  it  is  possible 
for  every  prosperous  community  to  give  its  young  people 
at  their  very  doors  what  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  a 
college  education. 

8.  It  is  unnecessary  to  found  separate  schools  in  order 
that  agriculture  shall  be  taught,  and  well  taught.  I  am 
enough  of  a  partisan  for  agriculture  to  demand  what  is 
needed  for  its  development ;  to  advocate,  if  necessary,  sepa- 
rate schools  for  this  purpose,  even  if  they  should  result  in 
reducing  the  scope  and  curtailing  forever  the  full  and  pos- 
sible development  of  the  high  school.  But  it  is  unneces- 
sary to  resort  to  this  expuedient  in  these  days.  It  was 
necessary  to  do  so  in  an  early  day  because  of  the  in- 
different, not  to  say  unfriendly,  attitude  of  the  schools  of 
the  time,  all  of  which  were  organized  and  conducted  on 
the  classical  basis  in  order  to  fit  for  the  so-called  learned 
professions.  Such  schools  had  little  knowledge  of  and 
less  sympathy  with  industrial  education,  and  to  get  a  start 
it  was  inevitable  that  separate  schools  should  be  estab- 
lished to  do  what  existing  schools  would  not  in  those  days 
undertake. 

But  conditions  are  changed.  We  are  living  now  in  a  new 
age  —  in 'an  age  which  recognizes  that  the  highest  purpose 
in  education  is  to  get  ready  to  live  ;  that  real  education  is 
active,  not  passive ;  and  that  its  fruitage  is  service,  not  per- 
sonal gratification.  We  are  living  in  an  age  which  recog- 
nizes that  all  forms  of  useful  activity  can  be  made  yet 
more  useful  by  the  knowledge  and  the  graces  of  educa- 
tion ;  and  that  the  man  himself  is  bigger  than  his  occupa- 
tion—  bigger  than  that  narrow  avenue  of  public  service 


UNITY  IN  EDUCATION  I15 

through  which  he  obtains  his  livelihood  and  discharges  the 
ordinary  debts  to  Nature.  We  have  all  learned  this  lesson, 
and  by  this  time  we  ought  to  have  learned  it  well. 

It  is  true  that  education  for  industrial  people,  and  after 
that  education  in  and  for  industry,  arose  from  the  masses 
and  was  forced  upon  the  schools.  '  I  do  not  forget  all  this, 
but  I  beg  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  that  early  de- 
mand was  a  selfish  one,  —  a  righteous  selfishness,  it  is  true, 
but  yet  selfish.  The  masses  wanted  education  for  their 
own  purposes,  and  it  caused  no  little  jolt  to  the  educational 
juggernaut  when  they  proceeded  to  get  it.  But  when  they 
had  time  to  recover  their  breath,  educators  —  real  educa- 
tors —  began  to  take  stock  of  the  situation,  and  they  have 
commenced  in  these  days  a  new  policy  of  education  in  the 
world ;  a  policy  which  if  followed  out  will  develop  all  our 
resources,  both  industrial  and  intellectual ;  a  policy  which 
will  take  care  of  your  personal  needs,  and  mine,  and  yet 
which  is  as  broad  as  humanity  and  all  its  activities.  This 
new  policy  is  working  successfully  in  our  great  state  uni- 
versities where  men  of  all  classes,  aims,  and  prospects  are 
educated  cogether  from  the  standpoint  not  of  private  in- 
terest but  of  the  public  good.  The  same  policy  has  com- 
menced its  work  in  our  secondary  schools,  and  I  am 
anxious  above  all  other  considerations  that  these  schools 
should  solve  this  whole  problem  for  their  communities ; 
besides,  I  know  educators  well  enough  to  believe  that  they 
will  earnestly  undertake  to  do  it  if  they  are  intrusted  with 
the  duty,  which  is  also  a  privilege. 

These  modern  schools  must  have  a  fair  chance.  They 
are  new  institutions ;  they  have  hardly  been  in  the  field  a 
half  century,  and  how  they  have  grown  !  There  are  liter- 
ally hundreds  of  them  that  are  giving  a  better  education 
than  colleges  gave  a  generation  ago,  and  they  have  only 


Il6  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

commenced  to  serve  the  people.  If  they  have  not  yet 
solved  all  the  problems  and  taught  all  the  subjects  the 
people  need,  it  is  no  sign  that  they  cannot  or  that 
they  will  not,  and  they  should  be  given  the  chance. 
Every  new  addition  to  an  educational  institution  not  only 
serves  a  new  public  need,  but  it  enriches  all  that  was  be- 
fore. All  the  modern  secondary  school  needs  in  order 
to  serve  us  perfectly  is  men  and  money  and  time  to  learn 
how. 

There  is  no  longer  an  "issue"  in  education  —  certainly 
not  concerning  the  fundamental  industries.  I  am  told  that 
in  certain  remote  sections  of  the  country  some  people  are 
still  fighting  the  Civil  War,  but  most  of  us  know  that  it  is 
over.  The  old  issues  are  settled  and  dead  and  left  behind. 
New  ones  have  arisen  to  command  our  attention,  and  it  is 
unworthy  of  ourselves  to  expend  our  energies  on  lines  of 
effort  long  since  rendered  obsolete. 

Yes,  the  old  issues  between  the  classics  and  the  indus- 
tries are  dead  and  the  sooner  they  are  forgotten  the  better. 
I  have  been  through  this  educational  conflict  myself  and  I 
know  what  it  is  ;  but  even  the  old  soldier  who  insists  upon 
fighting  the  Civil  War  over  again,  to-day,  will  get  no  audi- 
ence. New  problems  have  arisen  with  the  new  generation, 
and  this  generation  proposes  to  stand  on  whatever  has 
been  gained  before  and  expend  its  energies  in  forward 
movements.  We  do  well  to  imitate  its  example  in  this 
matter.     The  new  issues  are  constructive. 

9.  This  demand  that  agriculture  be  taught  in  the  public 
schools  is  but  part  of  the  great  modern  movement  for  indus- 
trial education.  Whoever  has  lived  close  to  the  great  heart 
of  the  common  people  and  has  had  his  hand  upon  the  pulse 
cannot  fail  to  have  felt  the  throbbings  of  this  new  impulse 
for  more  than  a  generation,  or  to  have  detected  its  first 


UNITY  IN  EDUCATION  117 

feeble  flutterings  an  hundred  years  ago.  Whether  he  has 
had  his  ear  to  the  ground  or  not,  whether  he  has  lived 
close  to  the  heart  of  things  or  away  in  the  upper  atmos- 
phere, no  man  can  now  be  ignorant  of  the  great  fact  that 
a  change  is  coming  over  the  spirit  of  the  times  regarding 
educational  ideals;  a  change  that  is  fundamental,  and 
whose  shadow  or  whose  light,  whichever  it  may  be,  is  full 
upon  us  and  can  no  longer  be  averted  or  ignored. 

When  each  community  had  but  one  or  two  educated  men, 
—  the  minister,  the  doctor,  and  perhaps  the  lawyer, — it  did 
not  greatly  matter  what  their  education  might  be  like ;  but 
when  everybody  learned  to  read,  and  to  think,  which  was 
inevitable,  they  quickly  saw  that  the  system  and  the  sub- 
ject-matter of  an  education  suited  to  the  office  and  the 
study  were  ill-adapted  to  fit  men  for  the  farm  and  the  shop, 
but  exceedingly  well-adapted  to  unfit  the'm.  They,  before 
the  educators,  learned  that  the  benefits  of  education  were 
capable  of  being  extended  to  all  the  affairs  of  life,  material 
as  well  as  intellectual. 

But,  as  has  been  repeatedly  noted,  educators  soon  caught 
the  true  spirit  of  the  new  demand  and  were  quick  to  re- 
spond. They  have  responded  so  well  as  to  discover  that 
in  the  last  analysis  there  is  an  intellectual  basis  for  all 
industry  and  an  industrial  basis  for  all  education  that  is 
safe  for  everybody  to  use ;  they  have  shown  that  the  names 
of  various  occupations  are  but  names  for  different  forms 
of  activity  and  service ;  that  all  fundamental  occupations 
are  learned  professions,  and  that  any  form  of  education 
that  fits  for  nothing  in  particular  is  worse  than  useless, 
even  dangerous. 

So  we  must  look  at  this  matter  broadly.  Our  problem 
is  but  a  part  of  a  more  general  one ;  moreover,  this  general 
problem  of  how  to  educate  for  all  the  useful  activities  is 


Ii8  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

the  very  problem  upon  which  all  educators  are  busily  at 
work,  and  they  are  solving  it  inch  by  inch  and  day  by  day. 
It  is  for  us  to  stay  with  the  crowd  and  be  in  at  the  finish. 

The  American  high  school  is  a  form  of  secondary  educa- 
tion that  has  arisen,  or  more  properly  speaking  is  arising, 
to  meet  this  new  demand  for  universal  education.  Agri- 
culture, and  industrial  education  generally,  have  found 
their  true  place  in  the  universities.  The  next  step  is  that 
they  should  find  their  true  place  in  our  secondary  schools, 
where,  after  all,  our  attempt  at  universal  education  will 
render  its  greatest  service. 

lo.  If  industrial  education  is  to  be  conducted  in  sepa- 
rate schools,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  in  losing  the  in- 
dustrial people  it  is  the  ninety-five  per  cent  that  is  cleaving 
off ;  that  the  first  effect  of  this  loss  is  the  reduction  of  the 
high  school  to  a  girls'  school ;  that  the  next  effect  is  the 
loss  of  financial  support,  and  the  last  stage  is  the  degeneracy 
of  the  high  school  to  a  college  preparatory  school  with  no 
message  of  its  own  to  the  people. 

Reasons  might  be  multiplied  indefinitely,  showing  why 
it  is  wiser  to  go  forward,  meeting  our  educational  necessi- 
ties together,  but  they  would  all  be  of  the  same  general 
tenor ;  viz.  :  that  our  educational  problem  is  after  all  a 
single  problem  —  complex,  puzzling,  and  all  that ;  but  it  is 
a  single  problem  after  all,  and  we  should  stay  together  and 
solve  it. 

If  the  high  schools  were  as  indifferent  and  as  antagonis- 
tic toward  industrial  education  to-day  as  the  colleges  were 
fifty  years  ago,  I  would  raise  my  voice  loudest  for  a  sepa- 
rate system  of  agricultural  and  other  industrial  high  schools. 
But  they  are  not  indifferent,  they  are  interested;  they  are 
not  antagonistic,  they  are  exceedingly  friendly.  Agri- 
culture has  found  its  place  in   our   American  system  of 


UNITY  IN  EDUCATION  119 

education,  so  far  as  colleges  are  concerned,  and  its  place 
is  in  most  honorable  company.  It  remains  to  find  its  place 
in  the  high  schools,  and  when  that  place  is  found,  may  it 
be  equally  honorable  and  equally  favorable  with  the  place 
it  occupies  in  our  great  universities  where  it  has  done  so 
well,  and  may  industry  in  general  enjoy  the  same  experi- 
ence. 

In  a  large  sense  we  are  at  the  parting  of  the  ways  in 
this  matter.  The  demand  for  education  in  agriculture  has 
come  to  stay.  Indeed,  it  is  but  a  part  of  a  larger  move- 
ment for  industrial  education  generally  ;  meaning  by  that, 
education  with  a  view  to  some  form  of  useful  service  in 
the  fundamental  industries  as  well  as  in  the  so-called  learned 
professions.  This  larger  demand  also  has  not  only  come 
to  stay,  but  it  has  the  sympathy  and  earnest  support  of  the 
masses  of  the  people  and  the  very  large  majority  of  our 
best  educators.  The  only  substantial  difference  of  opinion 
is  as  to  the  best  method  of  procedure,  whether  by  a  series 
of  schools  of  as  many  distinct  types  as  there  are  occupa- 
tions and  interests,  or  by  a  single  system  of  schools  with 
separate  courses.  Which  shall  be  adopted  as  the  final 
American  policy  of  education  is  a  matter  before  us  for  dis- 
cussion—  and  there  is  at  present  no  deeper  educational 
problem  —  and  as  has  elsewhere  been  remarked  more  de- 
pends upon  what  we  actually  do  now  within  the  next  five 
years  than  it  can  depend  on  what  we  think  and  say  and  try 
to  do  twenty-five  years  from  now. 

This  issue  is  upon  philosophies  of  education  so  widely 
different  that  the  choice  once  made  will  be  final,  and  the 
consequences  well-nigh  irretrievable.  I  am  one  who  firmly 
believes  that  within  the  next  ten  years  we  shall  decide  for 
all  time  whether  we  shall  reap  the  full  fruits  of  our 
thoroughly  unique  educational  opportunities  in  America, 


I20  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

or  whether  we  shall  needlessly  follow  in  the  footsteps  of 
Europe,  where  social  distinctions  were  established,  and  the 
peasant  classes  fully  fixed,  long  before  the  modern  age  of 
universal  education  was  thought  of. 

Personally,  I  do  not  believe  in  that  philosophy  of  educa- 
tion which  would  establish  separate  schools  for  the  various 
industries  and  occupations  of  Ufe.  I  greatly  prefer  that 
theory  of  social  and  industrial  development  which  would 
establish  and  maintain  a  single  system  of  schools  wherein 
the  people  of  all  classes  should  be  educated  together,  dis- 
tinct courses  being  framed  and  conducted  for  the  benefit 
of  each  in  so  far  as  the  interests  differ  from  those  of  the 
common  mass  or  of  other  professions.  And  so  shall  we 
be  one  people.  To  this  end  let  us  be  wise  and  preserve 
our  educational  unity  as  we  work  at  the  solution  of  our 
difficult  problem  of  universal  education. 


PART  II 


AGRICULTURAL 

The  preceding  pages  have  necessarily  been  written  from 
the  agricultural  standpoint,  because  whatever  knowledge 
of  education  I  may  possess  has  been  acquired  by  an  inti- 
mate contact  with  agricultural  people  and  a  long  experi- 
ence with  their  struggle  upward  to  the  attainment  of  an 
adequate  and  suitable  education. 

I  have,  however,  for  the  most  part  avoided  detail,  because 
the  purpose  was  to  confine  attention  to  the  general  policies 
of  education  in  that  region  where  the  industrial  and  non- 
industrial  meet ;  where  occupations  shade  into  each  other 
by  imperceptible  gradations  and  where  one  man's  voca- 
tion becomes  another's  avocation.  Any  one,  therefore,  who 
might  chance  to  scan  these  pages  for  the  purpose  of  ob- 
taining a  hint  as  to  practical  methods  of  procedure  in 
introducing  industrial  courses  into  existing  schools  in  order 
to  secure  the  educational  unity  herein  advocated,  would  be 
disappointed  unless  a  little  space  were  devoted  to  that  end. 
I  have,  therefore,  added  Part  II  with  the  hope  of  being 
able  to  show  how  agriculture  at  least  may  make  its  way 
into  existing  schools  without  detriment  to  other  courses,  but 
vastly  to  their  advantage. 


i«3 


CHAPTER  VII 

AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  HIGH  SCHOOLS 

"  Is  agriculture  a  college  subject  or  is  it  a  high  school  subject  ? 
Our  forefathers  conducted  the  discussion  as  if  it  were  one  or  the 
other.    In  these  days  we  may  answer,  —  it  is  both."  ^ 

Agriculture  has  earned  an  honorable  place  in  some  of 
the  greatest  universities  in  America,  where,  with  respect 
both  to  research  and  instruction,  it  is  beginning  to  com- 
pare favorably  with  other  professional  and  scientific  sub- 
jects. 

It  will  never,  however,  really  reach  the  masses  of  the 
people  in  an  adequate  way  until  it  attains  in  the  high 
school  the  same  relative  rank  it  has  already  attained  in  the 
college,  nor  will  the  work  of  its  extension  be  fully  done 
until  in  some  form  its  influence  has  permeated  into  the 
grades. 

The  next  step,  however,  is  to  introduce  agriculture  into 
the  existing  high  schools  just  as  it  has  come  in  beside  other 
and  older  subjects  in  the  state  universities,  and  it  is  no 
stretch  of  the  prophetic  imagination  to  predict  that  this 
great  study  will  vitalize  the  high  school  as  it  has  helped  to 
vitalize  the  universities  wherever  it  has  been  introduced 
and  properly  supported,  and  from  these  schools  it  will  per- 
colate by  natural  process  into  the  grades. 

It  has  commonly  been  assumed  that  the  place  to  begin 

1  Extract  from  an  address  of  the  author  upon  the  History  of  Collegiate  Education  in  Agri- 
culture, read  at  the  meeting  of  the  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Agricultural  Science,  at  Lan«> 
big,  Michigan,  June,  1907. 

124 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  HIGH  SCHOOLS  125 

the  further  extension  of  agricultural  education  is  with  the 
elementary  country  school.  The  writer  does  not  share 
this  opinion,  but  his  feeling  is  that  the  strongly  organized 
high  school  is  the  next  place  in  which  to  undertake  the 
work  of  agricultural  education.  This  opinion  is  based 
upon  the  following  reasons  :  — 

1.  The  students  are  older  than  those  of  the  grades  and 
are  beginning  to  think  about  things  vocational. 

2.  The  teaching  power  is  stronger  and  the  work  can 
be  better  done,  while  that  which  is  experimental  will  be 
in  the  hands  of  more  experienced  teachers  better  capable 
of  making  necessary  readjustments  or  amendments  as  to 
methods. 

3.  The  Experiment  Stations  have  provided  a  mass  of 
material  entirely  suitable  for  secondary  school  purposes, 
while  the  literature  for  the  elementary  school  yet  remains 
to  be  made. 

4.  The  colleges  of  agriculture  have  tested  a  mass  of 
material  and  methods  and  found  by  experience  what  is 
most  successful  from  the  teaching  standpoint.  Much  of 
this  can  be  carried  over  bodily  into  the  high  school  with 
only  such  modifications,  eliminations,  and  change  of 
emphasis  as  a  good  secondary  school  teacher  with  fair 
knowledge  of  the  subject  will  know  well  how  to  make. 

5.  The  same  energy  and  the  same  teaching  force  will 
accomplish  vastly  more  at  this  point  than  in  the  grades. 
Not  only  that,  but  activity  here  will  in  a  short  time  produce 
in  the  high  schools  as  well  as  in  the  normal  schools  a  class 
of  teachers  who  can  transfer  this  work  to  the  grades  with 
prospects  of  success ;  whereas  to  begin  in  the  grades  pre- 
supposes a  class  of  teachers  that  does  not  at  present  exist 
and  for  whose  training  there  is  as  yet  no  adequate  machin- 
ery. 


126  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

Before  discussing  details  further,  let  me  say  that  when  I 
speak  of  teaching  agriculture  in  our  high  schools,  I  mean 
agriculture.  I  do  not  mean  nature  study,  nor  do  I  mean 
that  some  sort  of  pedagogical  kink  should  be  given  to 
chemistry  or  botany  or  even  geography  and  arithmetic. 
Let  these  arts  and  sciences  be  taught  from  their  own  stand- 
point, with  as  direct  application  to  as  many  affairs  of  real 
life  as  possible ;  but  let  chemistry  continue  to  be  chemistry, 
and  let  agriculture  introduce  new  matter  into  the  schools  and 
with  it  a  new  point  of  view.  Nor  should  this  new  matter 
be  "  elementary  agriculture."  In  some  ways  I  could  wish 
the  phrase  had  never  been  coined.  What  is  wanted  in  our 
high  schools  is  not  elementary  agriculture,  but  elemental, 
fundamental  agriculture.  For  this  purpose  we  should  select 
out  of  what  is  taught  in  our  colleges  not  only  those  phases 
of  agriculture  which  are  adapted  to  use  in  the  high  school, 
but  also  those  that  strike  at  the  root  of  farm  life  and  its 
affairs — something  that  will  appeal  to  real  farmers  and 
that  will  serve  actually  to  educate  their  boys  for  the  busi- 
ness of  farming  —  soil  physics,  soil  fertility,  laboratory 
fields  in  crop  production,  the  use  of  farm  machinery, 
and  the  classification  and  principles  of  feeding  of  live 
stock. 

As  I  see  it,  every  high  school  that  has  a  natural  agricul- 
tural constituency  of  any  considerable  importance  should 
put  in  a  department  of  agriculture  on  the  same  basis  as  its 
department  of  chemistry,  and  proceed  to  offer  at  least  one 
year,  and  better  four  years,  of  technical  agriculture  taught 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  farm,  that  is,  for  the  purpose  of 
making  farmers,  to  be  accompanied  by  such  collateral  in- 
struction in  the  arts  and  sciences  as  shall  provide  a  suitable 
course  for  such  of  its  pupils  as  find  their  interests  in  the 
country  and  on  the  farm. 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  HIGH  SCHOOLS  127 

The  other  point  on  which  I  would  be  particular  is  this : 
I  am  not  arguing  that  the  high  schools  in  their  present 
condition  are  doing,  or  are  able  to  do,  what  is  needed  for 
agriculture.  My  contention  is  that  they  can  get  ready  to 
do  it,  and  that  right  speedily ;  and  that  if  they  will  pro- 
ceed to  get  ready  they  should  have  the  chance,  for  it  is 
their  opportunity  and  their  privilege ;  and  if  they  do  not 
propose  to  serve  agriculture  and  her  people  as  faithfully 
and  as  well  as  they  are  serving  or  intend  to  serve  other 
interests,  then  they  should  be  compelled  to  do  it.  That  is 
my  thesis  in  a  few  words ;  but  my  conviction  is  that  they 
are  for  the  most  part  fully  ready  to  direct  both  their  schol- 
arship and  their  tremendous  efficiency  toward  our  problem 
if  we  will  let  them,  and  show  them  how.i 

I  can  best  illustrate  my  thought  in  this  connection  by 
an  outline  of  four  years'  work  in  agriculture  designed  to 
occupy  one  fourth  of  the  time  of  a  high  school  student 
preparing  for  the  farm.  This  course  is  not  assumed  to  be 
ideal,  but  it  is  known  to  be  teachable  to  students  of  high 
school  age  because  most  of  it  has  been  so  taught,  and 
while  special  cases  will  require  emendations,  additions,  or 
substitutions,  it  is  confidently  believed  that  this  outline 
may  be  accepted  as  a  safe  basis  for  the  present  tentative 
efforts.  Indeed,  I  am  convinced  that  it  will  require  less 
radical  change  than  has  been  found  necessary  in  college 
courses  everywhere. 

The  following  outline  is  intended  to  provide  one  of  the 
four  subjects  which  the  high  school  student  is  supposed 
to  take ;  that  is  to  constitute  one  fourth  of  the  work  of  such 
high  school  students  as  expect  to  live  upon  the  farm :  — 

1  Extract  from  an  address  on  The  Next  Step  in  Agricultural  Education,  read  at  the  Uni* 
versity  of  Missouri,  January  9,  1909. 


128  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 


Outline  of  Four  Years'  Work  in  High  School  Agriculture 

Without  further  discussion  the  outline  is  presented  in  full  by  years 
following  as  closely  as  possible  the  seasonal  conditions.^  It  will  be 
noted  that  the  outline  provides  one  year's  work  in  each  of  the  following 
general  lines : 

1.  Crops  and  Crop  Production 

2.  Soils  and  Soil  Treatment 

3.  Animals.     Feeding  and  Breeding 

4.  Farm  Engineering 

FIRST  YEAR 

Crops  and  Crop  Production  ^ 

Fall 

Harvesting.  Methods  of  harvesting  grasses,  grains,  fruits,  and  vege- 
tables, and  cost  per  acre  or  per  market  unit  by  different  methods ;  cur- 
ing and  storing,  especially  for  winter ;  selecting,  curing  and  storing 
seeds  for  next  year's  use. 

Yields  and  Prices.  Making  a  table  of  the  yield  of  each  crop  that 
ought  to  be  expected  by  a  good  farmer  in  the  neighborhood ;  getting 
actual  neighborhood  yields  for  the  year ;  making  a  table  of  prices  of 
farm  products  for  the  last  ten  years. 

Grains.  Description  of  six  varieties  of  wheat  and  oats ;  grading  of 
wheat  and  oats  by  market  standard ;  the  proper  seed  bed  for  wheat ; 
testing  varieties  of  wheat  in  experimental  plots ;  ^  experiments  on  the 
effect  of  size  of  grain  upon  yield  in  same  variety ;  description  of  six 
varieties  of  corn ;  corn  judging  by  score  card  ;  preparation  and  storage 
of  seed  corn ;  shrinkage  of  corn  and  wheat  in  storage ;  botanical  rela- 
tions of  the  grain  crops ;  the  chinch  bug  and  the  hessian  fly,  identifica- 
tion, life  history,  and  means  of  preventing  damage  by. 

Legumes.  Identification  and  description  of  any  three  of  the  follow- 
ing:   Alfalfa,  red  clover,  white  clover,  alsike,  cow  peas,  soy  beans, 

1  It  is  of  course  impossible  to  be  both  logical  and  chronological  at  the  same  time,  and  the 
teacher  will  need  sometimes  to  look  ahead  in  order  to  anticipate  and  provide  for  coming 
needs. 

2  The  particular  crops  studied  most  carefully  would  necessarily  vary  with  the  locality. 

3  All  work  except  plowing  and  harrowing  to  be  done  by  students. 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  HIGH  SCHOOLS         129 

field  peas,  vetch ;  effect  of  the  legumes  on  soil  fertility  and  their  special 
value  for  feeding ;  botanical  relations  of  the  leguminous  crops. 

Grasses.  Identification  and  description  of  any  three  of  the  following : 
Timothy,  blue  grass,  orchard  grass,  redtop,  millet,  broom  corn,  sorg- 
hum, wheat,  oats,  rye,  barley ;  uses  of  the  grasses  for  grain,  hay  and 
pasture ;  botanical  relations  of  the  grasses. 

Weeds.  Identification  of  the  twenty-five  most  common  weeds ;  mak- 
ing a  collection  of  weed  seeds  in  small  bottles,  properly  labeled,  same 
to  be  the  property  of  the  student ;  burying  seeds  of  diiferent  kinds  in 
bottles  filled  with  soil,  and  buried  mouth  down,  to  be  dug  up  year  by 
year  for  vitality  test ;  description  of  stem,  seed,  leaf  and  root ;  habits  of 
growth  of  the  most  common  weeds ;  best  methods  of  eradication  of 
different  weeds,  as  dependent  upon  habits  of  growth. 

Fruits.  Budding  the  peach;  study  of  the  ravages  of  fungus  and 
insect  enemies  of  the  apple. 

Literature.  The  Cereals  of  America  —  Hunt ;  The  Book  of  Corn  — 
Myrick;  Grasses  and  Clovers,  Field  Roots,  Forage  and  Fodder 
Plants  —  Shaw. 

Winter 

Grading.  Judging  and  grading  of  grains  and  fruits;  examining 
grass,  clover,  alfalfa,  and  other  small  seeds  for  purity  and  identification 
of  weed  seeds. 

Testing.  Germination  tests,  preferably  of  corn  and  other  seeds  to  be 
used  in  the  neigborhood. 

Conditions  of  Germination.     Heat,  moisture. 

Conditions  of  Growth.  Heat,  moisture,  light,  plant  food ;  what  comes 
from  the  air  and  what  from  the  soil ;  indispensable  elements ;  what 
plants  manufacture  —  starch,  sugar,  cellulose,  proteid  substances,  oils, 
with  characteristics  of  each. 

Garden  Plans,    Definite  planting  plans  for  the  home  garden. 

Spring 

Preparation.  The  construction  of  the  hotbed  and  cold  frame; 
planting  and  care  of  the  same. 

Pruning.  Principles  of  pruning ;  pruning  common  fruit  and  or- 
namental trees. ^ 

1  The  best  time  to  prune  both  trees  and  vines  is  after  the  severe  cold  of  the  winter  and 
before  growth  starts  in  the  spring. 


I30  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

Grafting.    Top  and  root  grafting  of  the  apple. 

Crop  Enemies.  Sprouting  of  spores  of  oat  smut  or  wheat  rust; 
treating  of  oats  for  smut;  potato  scab  as  a  fungus  disease;  treat- 
ing of  potatoes  for  scab ;  study  of  the  corn-root  aphis. 

Planting,  Thick  and  thin  seeding  of  oats ;  thick  and  thin  plant- 
ing of  com ;  tip  kernels  and  butt  kernels  in  comparison  with  those 
from  the  middle  of  the  ear ;  large  potatoes  in  comparison  with  small 
potatoes  for  seed ;  whole  potatoes  in  comparison  with  pieces  for  seed ; 
examination  and  comparison  of  drained  and  undrained  lands  as  to 
fitness  for  planting. 

Spraying.  The  most  common  fungus  and  insect  enemies  of  tree 
and  fruit;  spraying  materials;  making  spraying  mixtures;  spraying 
for  codling  moth. 

Tree  Planting.  Preparation  of  trees  for  planting;  the  right  and 
wrong  way  to  set  a  tree ;  care  of  the  transplanted  tree. 

The  Garden.     Planting  of  school  and  home  gardens. 

Cultivation.  The  purposes  of  cultivation,  to  maintain  conditions  of 
growth  and  to  kill  weeds ;  the  best  methods  of  cultivating  the  spring 
crops,  with  experiments  on  the  deep  and  shallow  cultivation  of  corn ; 
reports  upon  the  methods  of  cultivation  in  vogue  in  the  neighborhood ; 
making  tests  for  moisture  in  field  soils  differently  cultivated,  choosing 
an  exceptionally  dry  time  for  the  examination ;  probably  of  necessity 
deferred  until  summer. 

Growth.  Study  of  the  root  system  of  a  single  plant  of  corn  or 
other  field  crop,  especially  of  potatoes  grown  in  pots  or  in  glass-sided 
boxes ;  rate  of  growth  of  corn  in  height ;  planting  com,  beans,  potatoes, 
and  sweet  peas  at  different  depths;  harvesting  of  early  crops  and 
arranging  for  succeeding  harvests  during  the  summer  vacation ;  study 
of  habits  and  life  history  of  at  least  two  of  the  most  injurious  insects 
of  the  region. 

Fertilization.  How  flowers  fertilize.  Study  especially  the  apple, 
pear,  and  peach  ;  later  the  strawberry ;  and  still  later  wheat  and  corn. 

Economic  Botany.  Making  a  list  of  field,  orchard,  and  garden  plants 
and  trees  that  are  useful  to  man ;  identifying  twenty  trees  and  shmbs 
suitable  for  ornamental  planting,  and  pressing  leaves  and  blossoms 
from  each ;  harvesting  of  crops  during  the  summer  or  in  the  fall. 

IJterature.  The  Pmning  Book  —  Bailey ;  The  Principles  of  Fruit 
Growing  —  Bailey;  The  Nursery  Book  —  Bailey;  Garden  Making  — 
Bailey;  Farmers'  Bulletins,  Nos.  35,  91,  129,  132,  199,  214,  215,  229 
and  249,  U.  S.   Dept.  of  Agr.,  Washington,  D.  C. ;   University  of 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  HIGH  SCHOOLS         131 

Illinois  Experiment  Station  Bulletins,  Nos.  37,  100,  117,  119,  121, 
126,  127  and  128;  Circulars  81,  89  and  117;  Cyclopedia  of  American 
Agriculture,  Vol.  i,  pp.  320-521. 


SECOND   YEAR 

Soils  and  Soil  Management 

Let  the  school  secure  a  piece  of  land  and  lay  out  a  series  of  plots  for 
demonstrating  under  field  conditions  the  fundamental  principles  of  soil 
fertility.  Let  the  plots  be  of  any  convenient  size  up  to  a  tenth  of  an 
acre.  Plant  to  a  single  staple  crop  year  after  year,  or  better  to  a  rota- 
tion of  such  crops ;  keep  notes  of  the  relative  appearance  and  records 
of  the  several  yields,  using  sufficient  lime  to  correct  acidity  as  the 
demonstration  progresses.  Apply  the  following  soil  treatments  be- 
fore planting: 

No.    I .   No  treatment. 

No.    2.  Nitrogen  treatment  in  the  form  of  dried  blood  at  the  rate  of 

700  pounds  per  acre. 
No.    3.    Nitrogen  treatment  by  the  use  of  leguminous  crops. 
No.    4.   Potassium  alone  by  the  use  of  potassium  sulphate  at  the  rate 

of  200  pounds  per  acre. 
No.    5.   No  treatment. 
No.    6.  Phosphorus  alone  by  the  use  of  steamed  bone  meal  at  the 

rate  of  200  pounds  per  acre. 
No.    7.  Phosphorus  and  nitrogen  combined. 
No.    8.   Potassium  and  nitrogen  combined. 
No.    9.   Phosphorus  and  potassium  combined. 
No.  10.   Phosphorus,  potassium  and  nitrogen  combined. 
No.  II.   Farmyard  manure  alone  at  the  rate  of  4,000  pounds  per  acre 

per  year,  or  8,000  pounds  every  four  years  (unleached). 
No.  12.   Farmyard  manure  supplemented  by  phosphorus,  using  600 

pounds  of  ground  phosphate  rock  per  4,000  pounds  of 

manure. 
No.  13.  No  treatment. 


132  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

Fall 

Harvesting  crops  from  experiment  plots,  and  comparison  of  yields 
with  former  years. 

The  need  of  nitrogen  and  its  supply  by  leguminous  crops. 

Root  tubercles  and  inoculation. 

The  need  of  phosphorus  and  the  sources  of  its  supply ;  rock  phos- 
phate and  bone  meal. 

The  need  of  potassium  and  the  commercial  supply. 

The  acid  test  of  soils.     The  need  of  lime  and  its  commercial  supply. 

Farmyard  manure ;  its  value,  its  preservation  and  its  application. 

Rotation  of  crops  from  the  fertility  standpoint. 

Critical  study  of  the  yields  and  the  farm  practices  of  the  neighborhood, 
designating  individual  farms  as  A,  B,  etc.,  but  concealing  the  names. 

Farm  Accounting.  Developing  a  system  of  farm  accounting  that 
shall  note  both  the  cost  of  production  and  the  draft  upon  fertility  with 
the  cost  of  its  restoration.  The  text  and  cards  as  used  at  Minnesota 
School  of  Agriculture,  St.  Anthony  Park,  are  recommended.  Develop- 
ing a  system  for  a  special  farm. 

Literature.  Secondary  School  Agriculture — Barto;  Soil  Fertility 
and  Permanent  Agriculture  —  Hopkins;  How  Crops  Feed  —  Johnson; 
Fertilizers  —  Vorhees ;  The  Fertility  of  the  Land  —  Roberts ;  Soils  — 
E.  W.  Hilgard ;  Illinois  Bulletin  No.  76,  Alfalfa  on  Illinois  Soil ;  The 
Soil  — A.  D.  Hall. 

Winter 

Origin  of  Soils.  Sources  of  soils  and  their  formation  from  rocks  by 
the  agency  of  water,  wind,  frost,  vegetation  and  insect  activity. 

Classification.  Different  kinds  of  soils,  as  clay,  sand,  loam,  surface 
and  subsoil. 

Soil  Physics.  The  formation  and  classification  of  soils ;  making  a  col- 
lection of  not  less  than  six  different  kinds  of  soils ;  capillary  and  hy- 
groscopic water ;  laboratory  experiments  to  determine  the  water  power 
of  different  kinds  of  soils ;  laboratory  experiments  upon  the  capillary 
movements  of  water  in  different  kinds  of  soils ;  effect  of  water  on  the 
color  and  the  temperature  of  soils ;  effect  of  drainage ;  size  of  tile  for 
different  areas ;  laboratory  experiments  in  methods  of  conserving  soil 
moisture ;  physical  effects  of  lime  on  soils ;  effects  of  freezing ;  effects 
of  puddling;   the  seed  bed  and  its  preparation  for  different  crops; 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  HIGH  SCHOOLS         133 

methods  of  tillage  to  secure  the  condition  of  germination  and  growth 
in  different  soils. 

Literature.  Secondary  School  Agriculture  —  Barto ;  Physics  of 
Agriculture — King;  The  Soil  —  King. 

Spring 

The  Seed  Bed.  Its  preparation  for  different  kinds  of  crops  and  at 
different  seasons  of  the  year. 

Tillage.  Methods  of,  to  secure  and  maintain  the  proper  conditions 
of  growth  ;  the  dust  mulch  for  dry  weather ;  critical  study  of  neighbor- 
hood practices ;  plowing  clay  land  in  midsummer  and  harrowing  to  re- 
tain moisture ;  effect  of  humus  in  the  soil ;  turning  under  green  crops 
to  keep  up  the  supply. 

Rotation.  To  be  studied  from  the  standpoint  of  crop  requirements 
and  distribution  of  labor;  hired  labor  on  the  farm. 

Effect  of  Drainage.  Comparative  study  of  drained  and  undrained 
soils  in  the  neighborhood  as  to  earliness  of  working  and  the  condition 
of  soil  in  late  spring  and  summer. 

Literature.  Farm  Drainage  —  Elliot;  Irrigation  and  Drainage  — 
King. 

THIRD    YEAR 

Animals  and  Animal  Affairs 

Fall"^ 

Horses.  Draft  and  driving  horses  contrasted ;  the  anatomy  of  the 
horse  studied  from  chart  or  skeleton  ;  practice  in  judging,  especially  as 
to  market  types;  identification  of  the  common  breeds;  care  of  the 
horse's  foot ;  care  of  the  neck  and  shoulder ;  proper  grooming ;  care  as 
to  feed  and  water  when  warm  ;  treatment  for  colic. 

Cattle.  Beef  and  dairy  cattle  contrasted;  practice  in  judging,  es- 
pecially as  to  market  grades ;  identification  of  the  common  breeds ; 
practice  in  judging  upon  such  material  as  can  be  secured  in  the  neigh- 
borhood ;  how  to  treat  bloat,  garget,  cake  and  milk  fever ;  how  to  treat 
tuberculosis  on  the  farm. 

Swine.  Practice  in  judging,  especially  as  to  market  types ;  identifi- 
cation of  the  breeds  of  swine. 

»  Types  and  Breeds  of  Farm  Animals  by  Plumb  is  suggested  as  a  text. 


134  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

Sheep.  The  coarse  and  fine  wooled  breeds  contrasted  both  for 
mutton  and  for  wool ;  practice  in  judging. 

Chickens.  The  common  breeds  of  chickens,  their  identification  and 
points  of  excellence. 

General.  Animal  census  of  the  school  district  as  to  number,  char- 
acter and  value  of  farm  animals. 

Literature.  Types  and  Breeds  of  Farm  Animals  —  Plumb ;  Breeders' 
Gazette,  Chicago,  111.;  Hoard's  Dairyman,  Fr.  Atkinson,  Wis.;  Bul- 
letins Agr.  Exp.  Station,  University  of  Illinois,  Nos.  78,  97,  122,  129. 

Winter 

Poultry.  Construction  of  the  poultry  house ;  care  of  hens  for  winter 
laying;  the  use  of  the  incubator  and  the  production  of  the  spring 
chicken. 

Feeds  and  Feeding.  Composition  of  standard  feeding  stuffs ;  the 
nutritive  ratio  for  cattle,  horses,  sheep,  and  swine,  with  practice  in  com- 
pounding rations ;  comparison  of  the  feeding  practices  of  the  neighbor- 
hood with  standard  rations ;  silage  and  its  uses ;  filling  the  silo,  the 
method  and  cost ;  special  value  of  leguminous  hay ;  the  balanced  ration, 
protein,  carbohydrates  and  minerals;  how  to  harden  the  horse  for 
spring  work. 

Cows.  Composition  of  milk  and  the  use  of  the  Babcock  test ;  com- 
parison between  cows  of  the  neighborhood  for  efficiency,  as  determined 
by  the  scales  and  the  test ;  the  nutritive  ratio  for  milk  production  com- 
pared with  the  feeding  practices  of  the  neighborhood ;  keeping  quality  of 
milk  produced  by  different  methods  of  sanitary  preparation,  clean  udders, 
filthy  udders,  fore  milk,  middle  milk,  last  milk,  open  pail,  covered  pail, 
open  dish,  bottle. 

Meats.  The  production  of  beef  contrasted  with  the  production  of 
milk,  with  studies  upon  local  practices  if  possible ;  different  cuts  of 
meat,  their  cost  and  comparative  value  for  food. 

Literature.  Milk  and  Its  Uses — Wing;  Feeds  and  Feeding  — 
Henry ;  Diseases  of  Farm  Animals  —  Laws. 

Spring 

Origin  of  domesticated  races. 

Natural  Selection. 

Improvement  by  selection ;  essentials  in  reproduction. 

Heredity  and  its  corollary,  variation. 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  HIGH  SCHOOLS         135 

Practice  in  breeding,  much  of  which  will  of  necessity  extend  into  the 
summer  and  also  the  following  year. 

How  to  cross ;  cross  pop  corn,  sweet  corn,  field  corn  both  naturally  and 
artificially ;  inbreed  field  corn,  sweet  corn  and  pop  corn ;  plant  the  mixed 
kernels  and  note  the  character  of  crop.  Detassel  and  compare  the  yield 
of  the  detasseled  with  the  entire  row ;  select  for  length  of  ear ;  select 
for  greatest  yield ;  select  for  height  of  ear  on  stalk ;  select  for  widest 
leaf;  select  for  number  of  rows;  select  for  any  striking  feature,  as  for 
corn  on  the  tassel.  Plant  corn  found  growing  upon  the  tassel ;  establish 
separate  strains  of  clover  and  timothy ;  hunt  for  divided  head  of  timothy, 
plant  it.  Make  a  collection  of  freaks  in  plant  growth.  If  possible, 
establish  a  poultry  plant  in  connection  with  the  school  and  select  for 
maximum  in  egg  production  and  for  plumage  coloration. 

Planting  or  other  experiments  made  this  year  to  be  carried  over  into 
the  next  sufficiently  to  permit  a  study  of  results. 

Literature,  Origin  of  Species — Darwin.  Domesticated  Animals  and 
Plants  —  Davenport. 


FOURTH  YEAR 

Farm  Mechanics 

Fall 

Student's  progress  in  special  subject. 

Cement  Construction.  Making  of  cement  trial  blocks  with  different 
proportions  of  sand ;  laboratory  experiments ;  making  of  fence  posts ; 
reenforcement ;  construction  of  walks,  tanks,  and  small  bridges ;  silo 
construction. 

Drainage.  Location  of  tile  and  sewer  drains ;  leveling  for  drains ; 
digging  the  ditch ;  leveling  and  finishing  the  bottom ;  laying  tile  and 
sewer  pipe;  the  general  nature  of  infectious  diseases,  with  especial 
reference  to  those  carried  by  water ;  source  and  supply  of  pure  water ; 
sanitary  drainage ;  house  sanitation. 

Literature.  Farm  Drainage  —  Elliot ;  Irrigation  and  Drainage  — 
King ;  Sanitation  of  the  Country  House  —  Bashore ;  Water  and  Public 
Health  —  Fuertes ;  The  Chemistry  of  Life  and  Health  —  Kimmius ; 
Bacteria  in  Relation  to  Country  Life,  Parts  II  and  III  —  Lipman ; 
Proper  Disposal  of  Sewage  Wastes  in  Rural  Districts  (Nelson,  Bull. 
166,  New  Jersey  Agr.  Exp.  Sta.)  ;  Sewage  Disposal  on  the  Farm  and 


136  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

Protection  of  Drinking  Water  (T.  Smith,  Farmers'  Bull.  43)  ;  Cyclo- 
pedia of  Am.  Agr.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  231-307. 

Winter 

Student's  progress  in  the  special  subject. 

Comparative  studies  jn  designs  for  farm  buildings,  especially  houses 
and  barns. 

Equipment  of  houses  and  bams  with  heat,  light,  motor  power,  water 
pressure,  ventilating  and  cleaning  devices  and  other  machinery. 

Design  of  farmstead  grounds  and  their  suitable  planting. 

Each  student  should  prepare  and  present  an  original  design  of  either 
building,  equipment,  or  planting. 

Literature,  Country  Life  in  America;  Farm  Dwellings — Wing; 
The  Farmstead  — Roberts. 

spring 

Student's  progress  in  the  special  subject. 

Application  of  the  fertilizers  and  planting  of  spring  crops  on  the 
permanent  plots. 

Construction  and  Operation  of  Farm  Machinery.  A  careful  study  of 
what  the  tool  is  designed  to  do  and  the  special  manner  of  doing  it,  to 
be  accomplished  by  taking  down  and  setting  up  not  less  than  two  ma- 
chines, the  mower  and  the  self-binder ;  adjustment  of  the  plow ;  use  of 
the  small  gasoline  engine. 

Care  of  Machinery.  Cleaning  and  oiling ;  the  protection  of  wearing 
parts,  especially  where  wood  and  iron  come  together ;  necessity  of  hous- 
ing; overhauling  and  preparation  for  winter  storage;  securing  and 
keeping  a  good  cutting  edge. 

Bench  and  Forge  Work.  Sufficient  to  enable  the  student  to  make 
simple  repairs  in  wood  and  iron. 

Report  on  the  special  subject. 

Literature.  Farm  Machinery  and  Farm  Motors  —  Davidson  & 
Chase ;  ^  Concrete  Construction  about  the  Home  and  on  the  Farm  —  the 
Atlas  Portland  Cement  Company,  New  York  City ;  1  Science  of  Suc- 
cessful Threshing  —  J.  I.  Case  &  Company,  Racine,  Wis. ;  Kent's 
Mechanical  Engineers'  Pocketbook. 

For  information  on  Belt  Lacing,  etc.,  get  catalogues  from  any  com- 
pany manufacturing  them. 

^  Pamphlets  issued  by  manufacturers  for  advertising  purposes. 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  HIGH  SCHOOLS         137 

Is  it  objected  that  such  a  course  of  academic  procedure 
is  certain  to  exclude  other  studies  that  are  indispensable  ? 
To  such  objection  I  answer  as  follows  :  — 

1.  No  instruction  is  more  indispensable  than  that  which 
enables  the  individual  to  be  self-sustaining  and  to  contribute 
his  share  to  the  world's  work  that  must  be  done  if  man  as 
a  whole  is  to  progress  or  even  to  exist. 

2.  There  is  no  law  but  custom  to  dictate  that  a  high 
school  course  is  to  be  exactly  four  years  long,  and  if  such 
a  procedure  as  is  herein  advocated  should  lengthen  the 
school  period  to  five  years,  it  would  be  to  the  advantage 
both  of  secondary  and  of  higher  education. 

3.  Something  can  be  done  both  by  condensation  and 
elimination  as  well  as  by  better  methods  of  study  and  of 
teaching  to  reduce  the  time  limit  without  impoverishing  the 
course. 

4.  If  the  student  is  getting  something  day  by  day  which, 
to  his  senses,  is  evidently  going  to  help  him  to  succeed  as 
he  sees  success,  then  he  will  not  only  remain  longer  in  the 
school,  but  he  will  pursue  his  other  studies  with  greater 
willingness  and  better  results,  all  of  which  tends  to  higher 
scholarship  within  the  school  as  well  as  to  greater  efficiency 
afterward. 

5.  At  best  but  a  small  fraction  graduate  from  any 
course,  hence  this  plan  will  provide  the  student  day  by  day 
with  a  balanced  programme  as  between  the  vocational  and 
the  non-vocational,  and  the  preservation  of  this  balance  is 
of  vastly  more  consequence  than  is  the  total  length  of  the 
course  or  the  mere  element  of  graduation. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  ELEMENTARY  SCHOOL 
"  As  the  twig  is  bent  the  tree  is  inclined." 

Something  of  agriculture  can  certainly  be  taught  in  the 
grades,  and  especially  in  such  of  the  ungraded  country 
schools  as  have  riot  yet  felt  the  blighting  effect  of  better 
schools  in  the  near  vicinity.  Just  what  this  will  be  is  yet 
to  be  worked  out.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  about 
all  the  real  experience  we  have  had  in  teaching  agriculture 
is  in  colleges  and  for  the  specific  purpose  of  training 
farmers.  Manifestly  this  experience  can  be  transferred 
almost  bodily  to  the  high  school,  which  also  fits  for  life,  so 
that  the  problem  of  introducing  agriculture  in  these  schools 
is  largely  one  of  selection  of  material  and  its  proper  corre- 
lation with  the  non-technical. 

The  introduction  of  agriculture  into  the  grades,  however, 
is  another  matter.  It  is  not  simpler,  but  vastly  more  diffi- 
cult, partly  because  the  technical  significance  of  the  sub- 
ject is  less  and  its  pedagogical  significance  is  more,  and 
partly  because  the  teacher  is  and  must  be  less  of  a 
specialist. 

No  thinking  man,  however,  can  avoid  the  conviction  that 
technical  instruction  should  begin  in  the  grades  and  the 
child  not  to  be  permitted  to  reach  the  high  school  age  with- 
out its  attention  having  been  sharply  directed  to  the  way  in 
which  the  family  hfe  is  sustained.  This  is  partly  because 
habits  of  industry  and  thrift  are  necessary  and  need  to  be 

138 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  ELEMENTARY  SCHOOL      139 

instilled  early  to  be  effective,  and  partly  because  the  great 
mass  of  children  never  continue  beyond  the  grades. 

The  unpardonable  sin  of  the  parent  or  the  teacher  is 
to  urge  the  child  to  "  get  an  education  so  he  won't  have 
to  work."  Unfortunately  neither  parents  nor  teachers  can 
claim  immunity  at  this  point,  and  when  this  economic, 
social,  and  moral  offense  is  committed,  it  is  directed  aUke 
against  the  little  one  and  the  generation  of  which  he  is  so 
soon  to  form  an  integral  part.  He  is  to  get  an  education 
that  his  work  may  be  more  effective  and  his  life  as  a  whole 
more  successful ;  and  as  life  in  general  is  founded  upon 
industry,  so  should  the  industrial  side  of  his  education  begin 
early  and  proceed  as  a  parallel  to  the  end,  or,  at  least,  until 
intelligently  abandoned  for  a  non-industrial  profession.  It 
may  be  remarked  parenthetically  that  the  public  is  not 
interested  in  those  forms  of  education  that  end  in  nothing 
and  that  express  themselves  in  no  form  of  human  activity, 
using  the  term  activity  in  its  broadest  sense. 

Our  first  attempts  at  universal  education  resulted,  not 
advantageously,  but  disastrously,  to  many  of  our  most  use- 
ful and  necessary  occupations.  Children  of  farmers  and 
mechanics  flocked  to  school,  but  the  course  of  study  was 
adapted  to  the  so-called  learned  professions.  It  was  not 
only  silent  about  the  great  industries  of  life,  but  the  in- 
fluence exerted  upon  the  young  was  to  fire  them  with  an 
ambition  to  "  rise  in  the  world,"  whatever  that  may  be. 
The  meaning  given  the  term,  however,  by  repeated  if  not 
almost  daily  injunction  of  teacher  and  text  alike  was  to  "get 
an  education  that  you  may  not  be  obliged  to  labor." 

This  was  universal  education  only  in  the  sense  that 
everybody  was  admitted  to  the  schools  :  it  was  not  univer- 
sal education  in  the  sense  that  a  true  picture  was  afforded 
of  the  many  activities  of  a  highly  civilized  state.     It  was 


140  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

not  universal  in  the  sense  that  the  necessary  occupation  of 
some  ninety  per  cent  of  all  the  people  was  ^fairly  treated. 
The  courses  of  study  not  only  failed  to  provide  anything 
directly  professional  in  farming,  mechanics,  and  the  useful 
arts  and  industries  generally,  but  the  incidental  influence 
was  to  crowd  the  hundred  per  cent  into  the  occupations  of 
the  ten  per  cent. 

So  the  mechanic's  boy  that  went  much  to  school  seldom 
or  never  returned  to  the  shop,  and  out  of  the  many  who 
went  out  to  seek  their  fortune,  a  few,  of  course,  succeeded 
and  served  as  examples  to  fire  other  hundreds  to  "  escape 
from  a  life  of  toil." 

In  the  same  way  the  farm  boy  who  had  much  contact 
with  the  schools  seldom  returned  to  the  farm,  but  hied 
him  to  the  city,  where  he  was  welcome  for  his  habits  of 
thrifty  industry,  whether  he  ever  rose  or  whether  he  ground 
his  life  out  in  a  cheap  clerkship.  This  stripping  of  the 
land  and  the  country  of  its  brightest  and  best,  its  most 
ambitious  and  promising  young  went  on  until  a  general 
state  of  public  alarm  ensued  as  to  the  consequences  of 
such  a  system  of  one-sided  education  when  applied  to  all 
the  people,  for  the  evident  effect  was  to  strip  the  useful 
industries  and  occupations  of  the  choicest  young  men  and 
pile  them  up  in  a  few  favored  callings  where  many  of  them 
were  not  needed  nor  wanted. 

This  was  not  the  worst  result,  either,  because  this  effect 
of  education  upon  the  industries  themselves  was  not  help- 
ful but  disastrous,  whereas  we  have  a  right  to  assume  that 
if  all  men  are  to  be  educated,  then  all  occupations  will  be 
elevated  and  developed  and  improved  as  only  educated  and 
able  men  can  improve  a  profession.  Hence  the  revolution 
against  the  first  effects  of  universal  education ;  hence  the 
crusade  for  agricultural  education  ;  hence  the  demand  for 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  ELEMENTARY  SCHOOL      141 

industrial  courses,  hoping  that  the  young  may  thereby  be 
really  fitted  to  live  the  lives  that  most  normal  men  must  live, 
and  that  useful  occupations  may  be  profited  and  not  dam- 
aged by  the  operations  of  a  system  of  universal  education. 

Accordingly  we  must  begin  industrial  education  as  early 
as  possible,  and  agriculture  is  no  exception.  I  do  not 
claim  that  it  is  easy  :  I  only  say  that  it  must  be  done.  I 
do  not  claim  that  it  is  as  easy  as  to  teach  the  same  subjects 
and  the  same  ideals  to  older  pupils  in  the  high  schools  and 
colleges  :  I  only  say  that  the  way  must  be  found,  the  matter 
selected,  and  the  method  worked  out.  I  propose  no  definite 
details  at  this  point,  but  await  the  results  of  the  many 
trials  that  are  now  being  made  in  this  new  and  most  diffi- 
cult field  of  education,  confidently  believing  that  in  the 
very  near  future  we  shall  have  as  definite  knowledge  as  to 
matter  and  methods  here  as  we  now  possess  in  the  realm 
of  the  college  and  the  high  school.  Like  all  new  move- 
ments this  will  proceed  from  above  downward,  and  as  ex- 
perience in  the  teaching  of  agriculture  in  the  colleges  has 
paved  the  way  for  the  high  school,  so  will  its  teaching  there 
and  in  the  normal  schools  assist  progress  in  the  grades. 

Fortunately  for  this  particular  subject  it  is  closely  related 
to  that  recently  recognized  pedagogical  necessity,  nature 
study,  only  it  is  nature  study  of  a  peculiarly  valuable  sort. 

"Agriculture,  even  in  the  grades,  is  something  more 
than  ordinary  nature  study.  It  is  nature  study  plus  utility. 
It  is  nature  study  with  an  economic  significance.  It  is 
nature  study  which  articulates  with  the  affairs  of  real  men 
in  real  life.  It  is  nature  study  in  which  the  child  may  in- 
fluence the  processes.  It  is  nature  study  which  distinctly 
stimulates  industry."  ^ 

^  Quoted  from  a  paper  by  the  author  on  the  Relation  of  Nature  Study  and  Agriculture  In 
Elementary  Rural  Schools,  Meeting  of  the  American  Nature  Study  Society,  Baltimore,  De- 
cember 29,  1908. 


142  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

When  the  pupil  is  sent  to  study  the  tree,  the  bird,  or  the 
insect,  the  most  that  he  can  do  is  to  observe  and  record. 
This  is  all  good  in  its  way,  but  the  tree,  the  bird,  and  the 
insect  are  self -sufficient  unto  themselves,  or,  at  least,  are 
in  no  sense  dependent  upon  the  boy,  nor  are  they  of  much 
consequence  to  him  or  his  except  in  an  aesthetic  sense. 

When,  however,  the  boy  is  set  to  studying  the  pig,  the 
matter  of  utility  at  once  enters  in  as  a  factor  of  the  problem. 
The  pig  is  worth  something  and  the  boy  can  see  it.  He 
can  see  how  the  bare  existence  of  the  pig  is  dependent 
upon  regular  feeding  which  he  himself  may  give ;  and 
how  the  pig,  when  he  is  brought  to  a  finish,  is  capable  of 
contributing  not  only  to  the  support  of  the  body,  but  can  be 
sold  for  money  with  which  the  boy  may  possess  himself  of 
anything  dear  to  his  heart.  He  sees,  in  other  words,  how 
he  himself  may  influence  the  production  of  pigs,  and  if 
he  has  even  a  fair  share  of  that  creative  activity  which  most 
boys  possess,  it  will  be  stimulated  into  action  by  the  pros- 
pect. 

If  he  is  set  to  studying  the  cow  and  her  milk,  especially 
if  he  learns  how  to  compare  one  kind  of  milk  with  another, 
or  if  his  attention  is  even  directed  to  the  conditions  under 
which  different  kinds  may  be  produced,  he  sees  in  concrete 
ways  how  Nature  behaves  in  her  workshop,  what  it  is  that 
Nature  is  doing,  day  by  day,  and  how  it  is  that  these  activ- 
ities are  connected  with  the  affairs  of  men.  He  cannot 
help  seeing  how  the  family  that  owns  good  cows  has  an 
advantage  in  the  world  over  those  whose  cows  are  poor  or 
ill-fed. 

If  he  is  set  to  studying  corn,  he  knows  at  once  that  he  is 
dealing  with  a  crop  whose  management  is  in  the  nands  of 
man ;  with  something  that  does  not  exist  for  itself  alone 
and  that  would  not  and  could  not  exist  except  for  man's  at- 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  ELEMENTARY   SCHOOL      143 

tention.  All  this  helps  to  stimulate  activity  and  produc- 
tive energy  on  the  part  of  the  child,  which  is  one  of  the 
things  we  need  to  nourish  when  we  take  children  out  of 
real  life  for  a  considerable  length  of  time  and  put  them 
into  that  artificial  world  we  call  the  schoolroom. 

So  we  might  review  the  whole  gamut  of  topics  agricul- 
tural and  show  how  their  study  stimulates  and  satisfies 
something  more  than  curiosity  or  even  observation  and 
record ;  how  they  reach  out  and  take  hold  of  the  very  life 
of  the  boy,  and  how  they  connect  the  affairs  of  the  school 
and  the  schoolroom  with  those  of  the  home,  the  neighbor- 
hood, and  the  world  into  which  the  child  is  already  anxious 
to  plunge  and  make  himself  known  and  felt. 

One  of  our  problems  in  education  is  how  to  give  inform- 
ation to  the  young  and  how  to  teach  methods  of  acquiring 
more  without  destroying  creative  instinct;  how  to  com- 
pensate in  the  school  for  some  of  the  damage  we  have 
done  in  taking  the  child  out  of  real  life  during  the  educa- 
tive process.  Now  nature  study  in  itself  is  good  for  this 
purpose.  It  is  more  than  that ;  it  is  excellent.  It  stimu- 
lates a  love  for  the  material  that  is  around  us.  It  stimu- 
lates observation  of  what  is  going  on,  and  it  gives  practice 
in  making  accurate  records  of  what  is  seen ;  but  if  nature 
study  can  extend  into  the  realm  of  the  useful,  into  the 
region  of  the  productive,  into  the  world  where  human 
relations  are  involved,  then  so  much  the  better. 

This  is  the  possibility  of  agriculture  as  a  subject  for 
study  in  the  grades.  The  large  question  is  the  teacher. 
To  what  extent  can  the  grade  teacher  know  the  field  well 
enough  to  use  it  to  advantage  for  these  purposes  ?  The 
only  answer  is  that  all  too  often  the  teacher  is  unable  to 
make  proper  use  of  this  mass  of  the  best  material  in  the 
world  for  teaching  processes  and  that  lies  close  at  hand. 


144  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

It  is  the  old  story  over  again  of  looking  afar  off  for  the 
things  that  after  all  are  close  by ;  but  in  this,  as  in  many 
other  things,  even  though  the  ideal  cannot  be  attained,  an 
honest  attempt  is  well  worth  while,  and  if  the  teachers  can 
be  induced  to  combine,  along  with  observation  and  record, 
the  elements  of  usefulness  and  the  human  relation,  then  it 
will  be  well  worth  all  it  costs  to  stimulate  as  much  as  pos- 
sible the  teaching  of  agriculture  in  the  grades  of  the  public 
schools. 

Moreover,  as  this  subject  makes  its  way  into  the  high 
schools  and  the  normal  schools  the  time  will  not  be  long 
before  teachers  will  be  developed  with  the  training  and  the 
material  to  go  out  into  the  world  of  the  children  and  hold 
up  to  them  a  fairly  true  picture  of  the  world  in  its  industrial 
activities. 

As  I  see  it,  the  objects  of  teaching  in  the  grades  and 
especially  in  the  country  school  that  superior  quality  of 
nature  study  which  we  may  call  agriculture  may  be  briefly 
outlined  as  follows :  — 

1.  To  educate  partly  by  means  of  that  industry  lying 
nearest  at  hand,  to  the  end  that  the  student  may  be  active 
rather  than  passive  —  a  doer  as  well  as  a  thinker. 

2.  To  widen  the  perspective  and  so  far  as  possible  to 
introduce  the  student  to  the  real  life  of  the  world. 

3.  To  instill  a  respect  for  industry  in  general. 

4.  To  give  some  agriculture  for  its  own  sake  as  well  as 
for  its  educational  value  in  order  that  its  fundamental  need 
shall  be  appreciated  and  its  practices  improved. 

Not  all  of  agriculture  is  available  for  this  work,  hence 
only  those  portions  that  lend  themselves  to  the  purposes  of 
the  school  should  be  used  to  this  end.  Just  what  these 
portions  shall  be  and  precisely  how  they  shall  be  handled 
remains  to  be  determined,  but  the  solution  of  the  problem 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  ELEMENTARY   SCHOOL      145 

is  nearing  and  its  general  character  is  commencing  to 
appear  in  outline. 

Whatever  may  be  done,  however,  in  the  way  of  teaching 
agriculture  in  the  grades,  the  ultimate  solution  of  the 
country  school  problem  Ues  not  in  the  old-fashioned,  un- 
graded district  school,  but  in  the  modern  method  of  con- 
solidation whereby  a  half-dozen  or  more  weak  single-room 
and  single-teacher  schools  are  combined  into  one  school 
with  several  teachers  —  an  effective  organization  for  doing 
well-defined  high  school  as  well  as  grade  work.  I  am 
not  unaware  of  the  substantial  advantages  of  the  old-time 
country  school  or  its  present  utility  where  it  still  Ungers 
with  its  old-time  vigor ;  but  it  is  an  institution  of  the  past ; 
an  outgrowth  of  conditions  that  are  passing  never  to  return  : 
moreover,  its  decay  is  hastened  rather  than  retarded  by  the 
rapid  movements  of  life  in  the  near  neighborhood,  and  the 
solution  of  the  country  school  problem  involves  the  exten- 
sion of  the  modern  high  school  until  it  includes  the  country 
as  well  as  the  city  and  the  town. 

In  no  other  way  can  the  country  child  as  such  be  in- 
sured as  good  educational  opportunities  as  his  city  cousin, 
but  with  a  school  sufficiently  large  to  be  strong  and  with 
good  courses  of  agriculture  in  the  rural  and  village  high 
schools,  the  people  of  the  country  will  enjoy  educational 
privileges  second  to  those  of  no  other  class,  for  in  many 
respects  they  enjoy  a  natural  a^d  initial  advantage  in  more 
and  better  sleep,  in  better  air  and  more  of  it,  and  in  a  life 
that  is  richer  in  experience  day  by  day. 


CHAPTER  IX 
AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  NORMAL  SCHOOLS 

The  sudden  call  for  teachers  of  agriculture  outside  of 
agricultural  colleges  is  by  no  means  limited  to  high  schools 
and  the  elementary  country  schools.  The  call  is  sharp 
from  the  normal  schools  of  the  Middle  West  which  have 
this  year  taken  some  of  the  best  trained  and  most  promis- 
ing of  teachers  of  this  class. 

This  problem  in  the  normal  schools  is  still  different 
from  that  in  any  other  field  of  agricultural  education.  It 
resembles  that  of  the  high  school  and  college  in  that  the 
school  is  large  and  strong,  the  pupils  fairly  mature,  and  the 
teachers  skilled.  It  differs  in  the  fact  that  the  students 
are  not  prospective  farmers,  so  that  the  technical  character 
of  the  work  is  at  least  one  remove  farther  from  its  final 
object.  Not  only  is  all  this  true,  but  the  students  of  the 
normal  school,  when  they  in  turn  become  teachers,  will 
mostly  be  called  upon  to  adapt  the  subject  to  the  grades. 

On  the  side  of  both  matter  and  method,  therefore,  the 
problem  in  the  normal  school  possesses  all  the  difficulties 
of  the  problem  in  the  grades,  with  the  added  handicap  that 
it  is  always  more  difficult  to  teach  teachers  than  to  teach 
students. 

Nevertheless,  because  it  is  early  in  the  field  and  because 
of  its  interest,  there  is  every  prospect  that  the  normal 
school  will  be  one  of  the  early  agencies  in  the  solution  of 
the  problem  of  secondary  education  in  agriculture,  as  it  will 

146 


AGRICULTURE  IN  THE  NORMAL   SCHOOLS       147 

doubtless  be  the  principal  agency  in  the  solution  of  the 
difficult  problem  of  teaching  this  subject  in  the  grades. 

The  incidental  effect  of  this  effort  upon  the  spirit  and 
purpose  of  the  normal  school  as  a  whole  is  certain  to  be 
decidedly  advantageous.  Agriculture  is  a  form  of  real 
life  that  is  readily  seen  and  its  public  significance  is  easily 
appreciated.  Again,  nowhere  else  will  the  school  garden 
be  likely  to  reach  so  perfect  a  stage  of  development  as  in 
the  normal  school,  where  the  maturity  of  the  student  will 
insure  exceptional  results. 

Here,  however,  as  in  the  work  of  the  grades,  much 
original  work  remains  to  be  done.  While  the  means  are  not 
yet  clearly  defined  and  while  matter  and  method  are  still 
under  experimentation,  the  end  is  clear  —  to  train  teachers 
in  the  art  of  inducting  the  child  by  easy  and  natural  stages 
from  his  own  little  realm  into  the  world  of  the  present  and 
the  past,  and  to  do  it  all  without  losing  touch  with  his  own 
personal  environment  at  any  point  to  the  end  that  the 
educational  process  shall  terminate  in  service  and  not  in 
shiftlessness. 

It  is  more  than  likely  that  the  introduction  of  agriculture 
into  the  normal  schools  will  in  the  end  exert  a  profound 
influence  upon  the  teaching  of  general  science.  There  is 
no  manner  of  doubt  that  the  masses  of  people  are  best 
benefited  by  the  teaching  of  science  in  its  applied  form. 
The  normal  schools,  however,  like  the  high  schools  are 
dependent  upon  college  graduates  for  teachers  of  science. 
In  the  colleges  the  sciences  are  largely  taught  in  the 
abstract,  each  science  from  its  own  standpoint  and  with 
a  view  not  so  much  of  its  application  to  the  everyday 
affairs  of  man  as  to  the  further  extention  of  knowledge  in 
its  own  realm.  The  teacher  of  course,  especially  when  young 
and  inexperienced,  instinctively  repeats  what  was  taught 


148  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

to  him,  and  thus  is  transferred  to  the  secondary  school 
both  the  matter  and  the  point  of  view  of  the  college  class- 
room, whereas  the  subject  should  doubtless  undergo  much 
transformation  before  being  presented  to  the  younger 
pupils  of  the  secondary  school. 

Without  a  doubt  as  the  sciences  come  to  be  better  de- 
veloped by  the  more  complete  exploration  of  their  limits 
and  as  their  mutual  interrelations  become  better  established, 
the  time  will  come  when  the  application  of  these  sciences 
to  human  affairs  will  be  more  generally  prominent  in  the 
mind  of  the  experimenter  and  the  teacher  alike.  With 
this  will  come  an  accumulation  of  a  teachable  body  of  this 
class  of  knowledge,  and  under  these  conditions  applied 
science  will  come  to  occupy  much  of  the  time  and  attention 
now  devoted  to  the  abstract  —  all  of  which  will  be  vastly 
to  the  profit  of  the  people  and,  in  the  end,  to  the  practical 
extension  of  science. 

Agriculture  is  evidently  to  be  a  pioneer  in  this  business 
of  the  adaptation  of  science  to  the  common  affairs  of  life 
in  the  schools  that  are  attended  by  the  masses,  and  if  this 
be  true,  its  incidental  service  may  be  even  larger  than  its 
direct  In  the  meantime  it  is  vastly  significant  that  the 
schools  where  teachers  are  made  have  at  last  commenced 
seriously  to  study  real  life  in  one  of  its  most  concrete  forms. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE  — 
WHAT  IT  IS  AND  WHAT  IT  MEANS  i 

The  energy  of  the  soil  is  the  life  of  the  people. 

Agriculture  is  a  remarkable  occupation  for  a  number 
of  significant  reasons  :  — 

1.  It  engages  the  time  and  attention  of  nearly  half  our 
people  and  it  will  always  absorb  the  lives  and  energies  of 
a  very  large  proportion  of  the  race. 

2.  This  is  the  only  considerable  caUing  in  which  the 
home  is  situated  in  close  connection  and  in  intimate  contact 
with  the  heart  of  the  business  so  that  all  members  of  the 
family,  men,  women,  and  children  alike,  live  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  occupation  and  each  finds  some  useful  part  to 
perform  as  a  contribution  to  the  general  effort;  that  is, 
agriculture  is  not  only  an  occupation  but  a  mode  of  life  as 
well,  and  whatever  touches  and  uplifts  the  one  is  bound  to 
react  powerfully  upon  the  other. 

3.  The  conditions  of  country  life  are  peculiar  in  their 
contribution  to  health,  their  stimulus  to  personal  initiative, 
and  their  fostering  influence  upon  that  spirit  of  individual- 
ism upon  which  rest  our  free  institutions  and  our  demo- 
cratic government.  The  country  is  a  good  place  in  which 
to  be  born. 

^  This  chapter  is  added  to  call  attention  to  the  significance  and  the  possibilities  of  Ameri- 
can agriculture.  It  follows  clearly  the  line  of  thought  of  an  address  delivered  by  the  writer 
at  the  University  of  Maine  upon  the  occasion  of  the  dedication  of  Agricultural  Hall, 
February  24,  1909. 

149 


ISO  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

4.  The  business  of  farming,  dealing  as  it  does  at  every 
step  with  the  subtlest  la>ys  of  nature,  is  capable  of  infinite 
improvement  and  of  indefinite  development  as  soon  and  as 
rapidly  as  the  findings  of  science  are  applied  to  its  affairs. 

5.  The  occupation  is,  and  from  the  nature  of  the  case 
must  always  remain  permanent,  because  all  men  forever 
must  subscribe  to  the  decree  of  nature  and  eat,  for  food  is 
the  fuel  that  feeds  the  human  engine,  and  in  the  last  analy- 
sis our  future  development  as  a  race  will  be  conditioned 
upon  our  success  in  providing  an  assured  and  independent 
food  supply,  abundant  and  suitable  for  a  highly  developed 
and  always  advancing  civilization. 

6.  There  is,  therefore,  a  public  as  well  as  a  private 
side  to  agricultural  development ;  and  it  is  because  of 
this  public  and  exceptional  interest  in  this  particular  oc- 
cupation that  we  have  estabUshed  and  maintained  at  public 
expense  in  every  state  of  the  Union  institutions  whose  busi- 
ness it  is  not  only  to  instruct  in  the  most  advanced  methods 
of  agricultural  practice,  but  also  to  conduct  research  through 
experiments  by  the  most  approved  methods  with  a  view  of 
adding  to  our  knowledge  of  the  scientific  facts  and  princi- 
ples upon  which  further  development  of  agriculture  and  of 
country  life  may  be  established. 

It  is  exceedingly  important  that  the  aims  and  purposes 
of  this  modern  educational  movement  be  clearly  understood 
and  especially  that  they  be  not  misunderstood. 

First  of  all  the  purpose  of  agricultural  education  and  re- 
search is  not  to  benefit  the  farmer  as  an  individual  or  even 
farmers  as  a  favored  class.  The  principal  aim  of  other 
forms  of  education  in  the  past  was  to  benefit  their  devotees 
personally  without  much  regard  to  the  consequences,  either 
public  or  private.  Not  so  with  this  form  of  education.  Its 
primary  purpose  is  the  development  of  agriculture  from  the 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE      151 

public  standpoint  as  a  productive  occupation  and  inciden- 
tally and  necessarily  of  the  people  who  live  by  farming. 
In  other  words,  its  first  objective  is  the  distinctly  pubHc 
one  of  producing  food,  and  all  other  considerations  are 
secondary  and  subsidiary. 

Now  the  public  is  not  interested  in  the  question  whether 
John  Smith  succeeds  or  fails  at  farming :  indeed,  it  does  not 
care  whether  he  farms  at  all  or  what  he  does  or  does  not  do 
so  long  as  he  does  not  become  a  public  charge  and  so  long 
as  he  continues  to  contribute  some  share  to  the  public 
good. 

But  the  public  is  interested  that  somebody  should  suc- 
ceed in  farming.  More  than  that,  it  is  interested  that 
enough  people  should  succeed  and  that  they  should  suc- 
ceed well  enough  to  operate  the  land  to  the  best  advantage 
and  provide  an  assured  and  sufficient  food  supply.  Now 
the  lands  cannot  be  operated  to  the  best  advantage  by  an 
ignorant  peasantry.  Only  men  of  good  parts  and  educated 
in  the  principles  involved  can  handle  these  lands  in  such  a 
way  as  to  secure  a  maximum  of  human  and  animal  food  at 
the  least  expense  and  at  the  same  time  preserve  their  pro- 
ducing power  against  future  needs. 

The  aims  and  purposes  of  agricultural  education  and 
research  are,  therefore,  primarily  the  promotion  of  public 
safety  in  the  matter  of  a  racial  food  supply,  to  which  matter 
the  education  and  information  of  individuals  is  an  essential 
but  subsidiary  incident ;  which  incident,  however,  is  certain 
to  result  in  producing  a  country  population  of  a  superior 
type,  all  of  which  also  reacts  powerfully  upon  the  public 
good  in  matters  both  social  and  political. 

In  the  last  analysis  and  reduced  to  the  lowest  terms, 
the  fundamental  purpose  of  agricultural  education  and  re- 
search is  the  development  of  agriculture  as  a  productive 


152  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

occupation  and  of  the  agricultural  people  as  a  numerous 
and  important  part  of  the  social  and  political  fabric. 

Developmefit  is,  therefore,  the  central  thought  in  educa- 
tional activity  along  agricultural  lines  to-day  and  the  devel- 
opment of  American  agriculture  to  its  highest  attainable 
estate  both  as  a  business  and  as  a  mode  of  life  is  the  high 
purpose  for  which  the  agricultural  colleges  and  experiment 
stations  were  founded  and  are  supported  by  a  far-seeing  and 
liberal-minded  public.  It  is  profitable  and  in  every  way 
highly  important  that  we  all  pause  a  moment  from  time  to 
time  to  gain  the  clearest  and  most  comprehensive  understand- 
ing possible  of  all  that  is  involved  in  so  important  a  matter. 
Accordingly,  that  we  may  all  alike  be  intelligent  and  work 
together  to  a  common  end,  I  invite  your  attention  somewhat 
carefully  to  the  details  of  this  development  which  may  be 
briefly  outlined  under  six  fairly  definite  propositions  as 
follows :  — 

I.  An  Agriculture  Profitable.  The  first  step  in  the  de- 
velopment of  any  business  is  to  "  make  it  pay."  Whatever 
we  may  say  about  the  glories  of  country  life,  and  it  is  much  ; 
whatever  the  songs  we  sing  of  the  free  air,  the  twittering 
birds  and  the  blessed  sunshine,  and  they  are  many ;  after 
all  and  before  all,  farming  is  a  business,  and  the  first  and 
the  fundamental  step  in  its  development  is  to  put  it  on  a 
paying  basis.  Our  colleges  and  our  experiment  stations 
have  done  well,  therefore,  to  devote  their  first,  and  up  to 
this  time  their  principal  efforts  to  the  labor  of  increasing 
the  profits  of  farming.  In  the  past,  farming  was  not  a 
capitalized  industry  and  such  a  thing  as  failure  was  almost 
impossible.  From  now  on,  however,  farming  is  to  be  a 
capitalized  occupation  and  failure  will  be  relatively  easy ; 
for  the  new  discoveries  of  science,  while  they  tend  to  estab- 
lish the  business  on  a  sounder  basis,  do  not  make  it  easier 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE       153 

in  the  sense  of  better  adapting  it  to  the  novice  or  to  men 
of  low  capacity.  Agriculture  is  rapidly  becoming  more 
difficult,  calling  not  for  less  but  for  more,  of  brains,  of 
knowledge,  and  of  executive  ability,  and  as  such  it  is  rap- 
idly challenging  the  attention  of  the  brightest  men,  who 
will  be  attracted  into  the  calling  about  in  proportion  as 
they  can  feel  the  possibility  of  reasonable  profits. 

No  business  can  hold  the  respect  and  the  service  of  men 
of  ability  unless  it  affords  them  a  reasonable  reward  for 
what  they  put  into  it,  and  certainly  no  occupation  can  com- 
mend itself  to  ambitious  young  men  until  it  offers  promise 
of  a  good  and  reliable  income. 

In  this  connection  it  is  most  significant  to  note  the  in- 
creased respect  for  agriculture  and  the  new  interest  in 
farming  and  in  country  life  that  commenced  to  spring  up 
among  all  classes  almost  immediately  after  the  work  of  the 
college  and  experiment  station  began  to  show  how  to  put 
this  business  on  a  scientific  and  paying  basis,  and  it  is 
significant,  too,  that  we  now  hear  less  and  see  less  of  the 
drift  from  the  farm  to  the  town,  and  that  men  of  sound 
business  sense  and  wide  experience  are  beginning  to  look 
to  the  land  and  to  agriculture  not  only  as  a  safe  business 
but  in  every  way  as  a  desirable  occupation.  This  is  the 
main  influence  that  will  regulate  the  flow  from  the  country  to 
the  town  and  hold  in  check  that  insane  rush  of  young  men 
cityward  that  we  have  all  deplored  for  these  many  years. 

2.  An  Agriculture  Productive.  It  is  not  enough  that 
agriculture  should  be  profitable.  In  its  development  it 
must  also  become  in  the  very  near  future  enormously  pro- 
ductive. How  pressing  this  point  will  shortly  become  few 
people  are  able  to  realize,  so  abundantly  have  the  virgin 
soils  of  this  country  produced  in  the  past,  so  boundless 
have  been  their  extent,  and  so  small  has  our  population 


154  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

been  almost  up  to  the  present  day.  A  little  careful  con- 
sideration, however,  will  speedily  show  that  conditions  in 
this  respect  are  to  undergo  a  fundamental  change  in  the 
very  near  future  indeed. 

Under  good  conditions,  the  human  animal  can  double 
his  numbers  every  twenty-five  years.  By  the  aid  of  im- 
migration and  despite  the  ravages  of  four  wars,  we  have 
maintained  this  rate  of  increase  in  this  country  since  the 
Revolution,  and  the  population  of  the  United  States  doubled 
four  times  in  the  last  hundred  years.  If  we  maintain  this 
rate  of  increase  for  another  century  —  and  something  is 
wrong  if  we  do  not  —  if  we  maintain  this  rate  of  increase, 
we  should  have  in  this  country  a  hundred  years  from  now 
no  less  than  twelve  hundred  millions  of  people,  a  hundred 
millions  of  whom  should  live  in  Illinois.  Under  these  con- 
ditions not  less  than  thirty  millions  should  live  in  the  state 
of  Maine,  —  that  is,  the  population  of  the  entire  United 
States  at  the  time  of  the  Civil  War  would  then  be  crowded 
into  a  single  one  of  our  smaller  states,  and  that  within  the 
present  century. 

For  various  reasons  this  ratio  of  increase  cannot  much 
longer  be  maintained,  yet  it  is  the  natural  rate,  and  it  tends 
to  show  us  what  would  come  about  under  normal  conditions 
within  a  century,  —  and  what  is  a  century  in  the  life  history 
of  a  people  ? 

Believe  me,  race  suicide  if  it  comes  will  be  due  not  to  a 
failure  of  the  birth  rate :  it  will  be  from  our  sheer  neglect 
to  maintain  conditions  that  will  insure  food  for  the  people. 
This  is  the  form  of  race  suicide  against  which  we  need  most 
to  protect  ourselves,  and  it  is  none  too  soon  to  begin.  The 
world  has  not  yet  learned  how  to  feed  such  a  population  as 
is  just  ahead  and  before  the  present  century  is  ended  the 
largest  single  public  issue  will  be  that  of  bread. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE       155 

Within  the  lifetime  of  children  born  to-day,  scarcity  of 
labor  will  be  a  matter  of  history,  and  abundance  of  cheap 
food  will  be  a  tale  that  is  told  by  the  grand'ther  in  his  chim- 
ney corner  dozing  in  his  dotage.  We  are  educating  in  our 
schools  to-day  a  generation  of  children  to  live  a  life  that  we 
ourselves  have  never  seen  and  that  history  does  not  record, 
and  we  do  well  if  we  soberly  calculate  what  their  conditions 
of  life  are  likely  to  be  and  mend  our  methods  accordingly. 

We  were  three  hundred  years  in  getting  a  population  of 
five  millions  of  people,  so  slowly  do  numbers  pile  up  when 
the  base  is  small,  whatever  the  ratio,  but  we  have  increased 
ninety  millions  in  the  last  hundred  years.  With  such  a  base 
and  with  modern  conditions  of  life,  this  country  can  and  will 
produce  men  at  a  rate  the  world  has  never  seen.  We  can 
now  produce  in  this  country  as  much  increased  population 
in  the  next  twenty-five  years  as  we  produced  in  the  whole 
four  hundred  years  since  its  discovery  by  white  men,  and  we 
can  produce  twice  as  many  more  in  the  next  twenty-five. 
In  fifty  years  from  now  we  shall  have  the  population  of 
China  in  this  country,  unless  something  goes  wrong,  and  it 
is  the  business  of  agriculture  to  learn  how  to  feed  them, 
and  feed  them  well.  When  it  has  learned  this,  it  will  have 
learned  many  a  lesson  the  colleges  do  not  now  know  how 
to  teach. 

We  have  thought  but  little  on  these  things  because  all 
of  our  experience  has  been  with  an  insufficient  population 
and  we  have  even  courted  immigration  as  a  source  of  labor. 
Had  you  thought  of  it.?  with  our  present  population  matured 
we  can  in  ten  years  duplicate  every  emigrant  dead  or  alive 
that  ever  touched  this  country.  We  have  never  yet  been 
conscious  of  our  population  as  far  as  adults  are  concerned, 
because  we  have  had  room  and  food  and  labor  in  superabun- 
dance.   But  we  have  never  had  to  deal  with  such  numbers 


156  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

as  are  just  ahead,  the  whisperings  of  whose  coining  may  be 
found  in  the  housing  and  the  teaching  of  our  now  enormous 
child  population.  When  Chicago  calls  for  eight  million 
dollars'  worth  of  additional  public  school  buildings  in  the 
next  two  years,  you  hear  from  a  tide  of  young  humanity 
whose  numbers  and  reproducing  powers  will  make  new 
problems  for  our  race  and  for  its  agriculture  to  solve.  Not 
the  least  of  these  will  relate  to  the  power  of  the  land  to 
produce  food  for  man  and  the  animals  he  has  domesticated. 

Aye !  for  the  animals  —  there  is  another  rub.  We  revel 
now  in  the  luxury  of  animal  life.  Every  family,  on  the  aver- 
age, has  a  horse,  four  head  of  cattle,  four  sheep,  and  four 
pigs,  with  some  few  millions  to  spare.  They  literally  work 
and  eat  and  root  for  us,  and  we  consume  their  bodies  and 
their  body  products  with  a  prodigality  that  no  dense  popu- 
lation has  ever  yet  found  possible.  Now  animal  service  is 
an  expensive  luxury  when  food  becomes  costly.  Animal 
food  is  approximately  ten  times  as  expensive  as  vegetable ; 
that  is  to  say,  it  takes  ten  pounds  of  grain  to  make  a  pound 
of  flesh,  which  is  no  more  valuable  for  supporting  life  than 
is  any  one  of  the  ten  pounds  of  grain  that  went  to  make  it. 

Our  descendants  will  face  the  day  when  they  must  sur- 
render some  of  this  animal  life  as  surely  as  they  face  the 
day  of  their  birth,  and  when  we  consider  the  fact  that  eco- 
nomic nitrogen  production  involves  leguminous  plants  that 
are  fit  only  for  animal  food,  we  will  begin  to  see  how  compli- 
cated is  the  problem  of  developing  an  agriculture  sufficiently 
productive  to  meet  coming  requirements  without  distress. 

3.  An  Agriculture  Permanent.  The  conditions  that 
have  just  been  discussed  will  not  be  temporary  and  tran- 
sient :  they  will  be  enduring,  yes,  permanent,  and  they 
must  be  met  by  a  permanent  agriculture  —  a  thing  the 
world  has  never  yet  succeeded  in  establishing.     No  race 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE       157 

has  ever  yet  learned  to  feed  itself  except  at  the  expense  of 
the  fertility  of  their  own  or  of  some  other  country.  Other 
races  have  had  to  meet  this  problem  and  have  gone  down 
under  it. 

Where  is  Carthage  to-day  ?  Where  is  Egypt,  whose 
civilization  once  flourished  upon  fertility  brought  down  from 
the  highlands  of  a  great  interior .?  What  of  Palestine,  that 
once  flowed  with  milk  and  honey  and  blossomed  as  the  rose, 
but  now  supports  only  a  miserable  and  straggling  popula- 
tion of  wandering  Arabs  ?  What  of  Babylon,  amid  whose 
*•  heaps  "  the  jackal  snarls  where  once  kings  held  revelry 
and  where  civilization  was  born  in  the  richest  river  valley 
in  all  the  earth .?  What  of  India,  where  struggling  milHons 
maintain  their  racial  existence  at  the  cost  of  periodic  and 
decimating  famine  relieved  from  other  regions  that  have 
not  yet  met  the  "  Great  Issue  "  ?  What  of  China  ?  With 
a  population  of  four  hundred  to  the  square  mile,  it  must 
presently  either  move,  adopt  new  methods,  or  starve.  It 
is  pointed  out  as  a  people  who  have  solved  in  some  un- 
canny way  the  problem  of  a  permanent  agriculture  and  a 
permanent  food  supply,  yet  good  authority  says  that  on 
the  highlands  are  regions  once  peopled  and  now  aban- 
doned, where  for  stretches  of  ten  miles  no  man  lives. 

What  of  England }  She  is  a  new  country,  yet  she  long 
ago  faced  failing  fertility  and  built  fleets  of  ships  to  carry 
guano  from  the  South  Sea  Islands,  exhausting  within  the 
recollection  of  men  now  living  those  natural  beds  which 
the  seabirds  had  been  ages  in  producing.  Not  only  that, 
she  has  brought  mummies  from  Egypt  to  fertilize  English 
soil  that  the  Englishman  might  have  his  beef,  though 
already  bread  riots  wage  from  time  to  time  in  London.  So 
narrow  is  the  margin  on  which  EngUsh  agriculture  is  main- 
tained that  good  judges  say  that  the  law  of  primogeni- 


158  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

ture  is  the  only  condition  that  makes  beef  production  still 
possible  in  England. 

Our  Federal  Government  announces  the  newly  discov- 
ered theory  that  lands  do  not  wear  out,  but  the  fact  remains 
that  large  sections  of  Old  Virginia  are  so  worn  as  to  be 
abandoned,  and  families  that  once  entertained  presidents  and 
foreign  diplomats,  now  that  the  wheat  yield  has  dropped  to 
ten  or  twenty  per  cent  of  its  former  magnitude,  eke  out  the 
income  by  keeping  summer  boarders. 

Every  intelligent  man  knows  that  the  old  cotton  and  to- 
bacco lands  of  the  South  are  badly  worn  and  have  lost  for- 
ever their  power  of  spontaneous  production.  That  great 
grain-growing  region  in  southern  Illinois,  known  locally  as 
"  Egypt,"  covers  an  area  large  enough  to  make  ten  such 
states  as  Rhode  Island,  but  much  of  it  was  sufficiently  ex- 
hausted, so  far  as  profitable  agriculture  is  concerned,  by 
two  generations  of  grain  farming,  that  some  of  the  land  be- 
came in  local  parlance  "  too  poor  to  raise  a  disturbance." 
It  is  fortunately  being  rapidly  restored  by  methods  devised 
by  the  Experiment  Station,  but  the  saddest  fact  is  that  the 
effects  of  soil  impoverishment  had  in  some  cases  gone  so 
far  as  to  affect  the  people,  and  they  were  unable  to  raise 
even  the  small  initial  cost  of  restoration,  in  which  case,  of 
course,  the  problem  must  go  over  to  men  of  capital  who 
had  sojourned  on  more  fortunate  lands. 

Not  only  does  all  this  have  a  bearing  upon  the  problem 
of  a  permanent  agriculture,  but  added  to  this  is  the  fact  that 
our  "boundless  prairies"  with  their  "inexhaustible  fertility" 
are  found  upon  examination  to  be  surprisingly  short  in 
phosphorus. 

If  we  lack  nitrogen,  we  know  now  how  to  get  it  from  the 
inexhaustible  supplies  of  the  air  by  the  use  of  leguminous 
crops.     If  we  lack  potassium,  the  natural  deposits  are  ap- 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE       i59 

parently  unlimited,  but  when  we  lack  phosphorus  we  are  in 
need  of  a  commodity  which  exists  in  usable  form  in  but 
exceedingly  limited  areas  on  the  earth  and  yet  which  is 
absolutely  essential  to  the  production  of  food. 

Considering  all  this  —  considering,  too,  the  fact  that  at 
the  present  rate  of  consumption  all  the  American  deposits 
of  high-grade  phosphate  rock  will  be  exhausted  before  the 
end  of  the  present  century,  and  considering  our  own  over- 
whelmingly increased  need  for  food  in  the  very  near  future, 
I  am  constrained  to  say  that  in  the  interest  of  self-protection 
and  the  founding  of  a  permanent  system  of  American  agri- 
culture, the  annual  exportation  of  a  million  tons  of  phos- 
phate rock  to  Germany  ought  to  be  stopped^  by  constitutional 
amendment  if  necessary. 

No  man  can  study  for  a  moment  the  entirely  new  con- 
ditions and  problems  that  will  confront  our  people  in  the 
immediate  future  without  realizing  that  the  estabHshment 
of  agricultural  colleges  and  experiment  stations  was  the 
largest  act  of  foresighted  wisdom  in  recorded  history,  nor 
can  he  fail  to  realize  that  their  adequate  maintenance  and 
fostering  support  is  not  only  the  first  duty  but  one  of  the 
highest  public  privileges  of  the  commonwealth  of  our  day 
and  time. 

There  is  to  be,  in  the  near  future,  a  struggle  for  land 
and  the  food  it  will  produce,  such  as  the  world  has  never 
yet  beheld.  He  who  knows  where  and  how  to  look  can 
see  it  coming.  The  African  activity  among  western  Eu- 
ropean nations  is  a  part  of  it.  It  is  always  cheaper  to 
move  than  to  stay  when  over-population  and  failing  fertility 
threaten  a  shortage  of  food  —  provided  there  is  any  place 
to  move  into ;  that  is,  provided  we  can  dispossess  the 
other  party  and  his  land  is  worth  the  contest. 

However  that  may  be  as  an  abstract  proposition,  for  us 


l6o  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

there  is  no  more  moving.  For  us  there  are  no  more  "  new 
worlds."  For  us  there  is  little  more  "  Out  West."  Our 
fortune  and  our  future,  whatever  they  may  be,  are  staked 
down  on  the  American  continent.  Literally  "here  we 
rest,"  and  whether  we  like  it  or  not,  we  must  devise  and 
establish  a  permanent  agriculture  here  or  go  down  in  the 
attempt.^ 

Our  descendants  will  certainly  be  as  cultured  as  we; 
they  ought  to  be  more  so.  Their  needs  surely  will  not  be 
fewer  or  of  a  more  modest  character.  Their  numbers  will 
be  vastly  greater,  and  unless  we^  not  they^  can  succeed  in 
founding  a  permanent  agriculture,  the  race  will  degenerate 
and  end  where  it  commenced,  in  poverty  and  barbarism. 

I  have  already  pointed  out  that  restorative  and  perma- 
nent systems  must  be  established  before  the  people  are  in 
distress  for  the  necessities  of  life.  It  is  we  who  must  dis- 
cover and  establish  this  permanent  system.  There  is  no 
time  to  be  lost,  for  we  do  not  yet  know  how  to  do  it  and 
a  stupendous  population  is  just  upon  us.  It  is  none  too  soon 
to  attack  with  all  the  scientific  vigor  of  all  the  Experiment 
Stations  of  all  the  states  this  problem  which  will  shortly  bear 
harder  upon  us  than  upon  any  contemporaneous  race  in 
the  world  except  the  Hindus  and  the  Chinese,  who  have 
almost  certainly  delayed  too  long  and  lost  their  chance. 
European  nations  will  be  occupied  for  generations  yet  in 
exploiting  Africa  and  perhaps  South  America,  and  we 
before  any  other  modern  nation  must  face  the  issue  of  a 
permanent  agriculture  in  its  own  country. 

We  have  no  right  to  dodge  this  issue  now  while  we  are 
few  and  young  and  wealthy.  It  is  our  own  descendants 
whose  lives  and  happiness  we  literally  hold  in  the  hollow 

»  Since  the  above  was  written  a  fleet  of  steamers  is  announced  as  put  in  service  to  carry 
Argentine  beef  to  New  York. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE        i6i 

of  our  hands,  and  he  who  shirks  that  responsibility  is  guilty 
of  a  crime  against  his  race  beside  which  ordinary  treason 
is  trivial ;  and  when  we  are  called,  as  we  are,  to  the  task  of 
establishing  if  we  can  a  permanent  agriculture,  it  is  a  call 
of  the  race  for  a  chance  to  live  and  work  out  its  destiny. 

So  much  for  what  may  be  called  the  business  side  of 
farming  —  an  agriculture  that  is  reasonably  profitable, 
highly  productive,  and  certainly  permanent.  What  now 
on  the  human  side.^  What  is  the  development  of  the 
farmer  as  a  man  to  match  the  development  of  his  busi- 
ness as  an  occupation  }  And  so  I  come  to  the  next  count 
in  our  series  of  development. 

4.  T/ie  Country  Comfortable.  Agriculture  is  not  only  a 
business,  it  is  a  mode  of  life  as  well,  and  if  it  is  to  be 
successful  in  the  latter  particular  it  must  in  the  end  afford 
its  devotees  the  same  comforts  of  life  as  are  obtainable  in 
other  occupations.  This  has  not  hitherto  been  possible,  but 
its  early  realization  is  becoming  every  day  more  promising, 
and  if  the  colleges  and  stations  perform  their  whole  duty 
in  this  direction,  and  if  they  are  supported  by  the  people, 
as  they  ought  to  be  supported,  then  one  of  the  earliest  and 
most  distinctive  developments  of  our  agriculture  will  be 
in  "  creature  comforts  "  on  the  farm. 

This  development  will  largely  take  the  special  form  of 
modern  conveniences,  including  labor-saving  equipments  in 
the  farmhouse.  The  farmer  has  provided  himself  with  all 
sorts  of  machinery  and  ingenious  mechanical  devices,  not 
only  to  cheapen  production,  but  to  make  labor  easier  for 
himself,  his  hired  help,  and  even  his  animals.  In  the 
meantime  his  wife  gets  on  with  few  improvements  and 
with  no  real  conveniences,  living  and  scraping  along  as 
best  she  can  against  the  day  when  the  family  shall  build 
its   home   in  town   and   "have   the   conveniences."     By 


i62  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

modern  conveniences  are  generally  meant  bath  room  and 
toilet  facilities,  a  lighting  system,  and  running  water  inside 
the  house.  That  is  about  all,  but  it  would  take  a  book  to 
recite  what  has  been  sacrificed  in  going  to  town  to  get 
these  things. 

For  this  the  farmer  has  abandoned  his  business.  He  has 
broken  up  his  children's  home.  He  has  exposed  his  little 
ones  to  the  unbridled  dangers  of  the  small  town.  He  has 
set  before  them  the  example  of  idleness.  He  has  turned  his 
back  upon  the  farm  that  has  made  his  wealth  and  stripped 
the  land  of  its  fertility  to  build  in  the  town  the  home  to 
which  the  farm  was  entitled.  He  has  stripped  the  country 
of  its  earnings  to  buildup  the  city  and  add  to  its  numbers  an 
essentially  useless  and  undesirable  population.  So  common 
has  this  thing  become  as  to  excite  public  alarm,  and  no  one 
topic  rings  a  more  significant  note  through  the  findings  of 
the  Country  Life  Commission  than  the  abandonment  of 
the  farm  at  the  stage  of  house  building. 

The  uselessness  of  all  this  under  even  present  conditions 
was,  I  think,  first  called  to  public  attention  in  an  address 
by  Mrs.  Davenport  at  the  Illinois  Farmers'  Institute  at 
Peoria  in  February  of  last  year.  She  had  had  an  exten- 
sive experience  on  the  farm  and  had  lived  a  good  number 
of  years  in  town.  With  a  natural  mechanical  instinct  and 
some  experience  in  building,  she  saw  how  thoroughly  the 
conveniences  and  the  labor  of  the  house  had  been  over- 
looked, relatively  speaking,  by  both  inventor  and  designer, 
except  where  conditions  of  life,  as  in  the  city,  compelled  some 
decent  attention  to  sanitary  measures,  evolving  the  bath 
room,  the  toilet,  and  the  slop  sink.  She  saw  how  completely 
the  labor  of  the  house  had  been  left  to  servants  in  the 
homes  of  the  wealthy  or  endured  by  the  wife  unable  to 
afford  a  servant,  neither  of  which  conditions  was  favorable 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE       163 

to  the  development  of  conveniences  for  performing  the 
household  labor.  This  comparative  poverty  in  house  equip- 
ment is  also  partly  due  to  lack  of  attention  on  the  part 
of  inventors  and  activity  of  manufactures,  all  of  which  is 
traceable  to  another  initial  abomination  —  that  ancient 
and  dishonorable  custom  by  which  the  husband  carries 
the  pocket-book  and  so  often  opens  it  only  upon  humili- 
ating supplication  for  a  share  of  what  the  wife  on  the 
farm  has  fairly  earned. 

Mrs.  Davenport  knew  that  conditions  had  commenced 
to  mend  themselves  in  certain  particulars  and  were  capable 
of  still  further  improvement.  Accordingly,  she  set  out  to 
learn  how  far  and  to  what  extent  the  farmhouse  can  now  be 
equipped,  not  only  with  the  so-called  modern  conveniences, 
but  with  still  further  devices  for  saving  labor.  The  results 
of  her  study  as  given  in  the  address  already  referred  to 
may  be  briefly  summarized  as  follows  : — 

The  enterprise  of  the  best  farmers  in  equipping  the  farm 
with  machinery  has  already  reached  the  stage  of  the  small 
gasolene  engine  for  running  the  machinery  of  the  barns, 
and  especially  for  pumping  water,  generally  into  small  or 
elevated  tanks  subject  to  freezing,  an  evolution  from  the 
old  and  unreliable  windmill. 

Beginning  at  this  point  with  the  gasolene  engine,  which 
stands  as  a  kind  of  connecting  link  between  the  machinery 
of  the  farm  and  that  of  the  house,  it  appears  that  this  little 
engine,  first  of  all,  can  pump  water,  both  hard  and  soft, 
into  the  Kewanee  or  other  automatic  system  and  secure  a 
pressure  of  70  pounds  per  square  inch  in  air-tight  tanks 
standing  in  the  basement  or  buried  in  the  ground  beyond 
the  reach  of  frost.  This  is  as  good  as  the  best  city  pressure, 
and  is  abundant  to  throw  water  over  any  of  the  buildings, 
carry  it  into  both  house  and  barn  and  near-by  fields,  and 


i64  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

put  both  hard  and  soft  water,  hot  and  cold,  on  all  the  floors 
of  the  house.  It  will  also  run  a  water  motor  —  cost,  six 
dollars  —  sufficiently  powerful  to  operate  the  washing  ma- 
chine and  do  the  principal  part  of  the  hardest  job  about  any 
home — all  for  six  dollars  under  pressure.  This  same  engine 
can  run  a  gasolene  heated  mangle  with  a  capacity  of  a 
napkin  a  minute  or  a  tablecloth  every  six  minutes.  It  can 
also  operate  a  storage  battery  electric  light  plant.  Not  only 
that,  it  can  furnish  the  power  for  the  churn  and  other  small 
machinery;  and  last  of  all,  it  can  operate  a  vacuum  cleaner 
system  whose  installation  in  the  private  house  is  now  en- 
tirely feasible. 

Besides  this,  the  soil  absorption  system  will  care  for  the 
waste  from  bath  room,  laundry,  and  slop  sink  as  completely 
and  as  satisfactorily  as  the  best  city  sewer.  If  economy  is 
imperative,  acetylene  or  gasolene  may  be  substituted  for 
the  electric  lights,  or  if  electricity  is  used,  the  small  ma- 
chinery may  be  operated  by  electric  motors. 

Here  we  have  water  pressure,  bath  and  toilet  room,  a 
lighting  plant,  power  laundry  machinery,  vacuum  cleaner, 
with  all  that  any  city  home  can  secure  in  the  way  of 
modern  conveniences  and  more  than  can  be  had  there, 
except  with  difficulty,  for  city  residences  commonly  do  not 
possess  a  source  of  power,  —  all  this,  as  well  as  in  the  city 
and  better. 

I  was  amazed,  optimist  though  I  am,  at  the  results  of 
this  investigation  into  the  possibilities  of  the  independent 
plant,  and  at  what  can  be  done,  not  in  the  future,  but  now, 
in  the  equipment  of  the  farm  home  with  the  conveniences 
of  human  life. 

But,  you  will  say,  think  of  the  expense!  Yes,  it  is 
costly;  all  good  things  are  costly.  Farm  machinery  is 
costly,   especially  a  reaper  that  is  seldom  operated  ten 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE    165 

days  out  of  the  year  and  lasts  on  the  average  but  three 
years.  It  is  all  costly,  but  remember  that  we  are  talking 
about  a  class  of  people  who  ride  always  in  covered  car- 
riages, drive  good  horses,  and  are  able  to  go  to  town  to 
live} 

Now  an  entire  bath  room  outfit  can  be  bought  and  in- 
stalled for  the  price  of  a  single  covered  buggy  and  will  out- 
last the  buggy  half  a  dozen  times  over.  The  vacuum 
cleaner,  that  acme  of  comfort  and  luxury,  will  cost  the 
price  of  a  good  horse  or  a  medium  team.  Yes,  it  is  costly. 
The  whole  outfit  will  cost  a  thousand  dollars,  perhaps 
twelve  or  fifteen  hundred  with  the  engine,  depending  upon 
the  size  and  grade  of  the  outfit. 

Yes,  it  will  cost  just  about  what  a  city  building  lot  will 
cost  in  any  town  worth  living  in  and  not  on  a  principal  street 
either.  In  other  words,  the  moment  the  farmer  moves  to 
town  to  secure  "modern  conveniences,"  he  "  planks  down" 
at  the  outset  for  a  building  site  as  much  money  as  it  would 
take  to  provide  all  these  things  and  more  on  the  farm  he 
has  left  behind.  Then,  in  addition,  he  will  need  to  draw 
generous  quarterly  checks  for  water  rates,  gas  bills,  electric 
lights,  and  invest  from  two  to  three  thousand  additional  for 
income  to  meet  the  extra  cost  of  taxation. 

Many  of  the  choicest  physical  blessings  are  inherent  in 
country  life,  such  as  good  air,  plenty  of  room,  open  sun- 
shine, and  comparative  freedom  from  dangerously  infectious 

^  Five  years  have  passed  since  these  words  were  written,  and  we  should  now  write 
"  automobiles  "  instead  of  "  covered  carriages."  What  is  here  sketched  has  been  more  than 
realized  on  many  farms  in  many  states,  but  within  this  brief  period  even  greater  changes 
have  taken  place  along  other  lines  of  expenditure.  It  has  been  a  money-making  and  money- 
spending  period,  in  which  luxury  has  too  often  overridden  comfort,  as  shown  by  the  fact  that 
thousands  are  to-day  riding  in  automobiles  who  have  not  yet  provided  bathrooms  in  their 
homes.  The  automobile  is  a  good  piece  of  farm  equipment,  but  it  is  not  to  be  compared  in 
permanent  and  practical  worth  with  the  modem  equipment  of  the  home,  where  the  family 
spends  most  of  its  life,  and  where  health  and  convenience  and  comfort  should  be  given  the 
first  consideration. 


1 66  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

diseases.  Others  are  being  rapidly  added,  such  as  the 
telephone,  which  is  both  better  and  cheaper  than  in  the 
city;  the  rural  delivery  of  mail  by  which  the  farms  are 
better  served  than  are  most  towns,  and  the  consolidated 
secondary  school  by  which  the  farmer's  children  may  re- 
ceive literally  from  the  father's  roof  the  best  education  in 
the  world. 

When  we  have  learned  to  build  comfortable  homes  for 
ourselves  and  our  children,  then  will  the  country  be  of  all 
places  for  living  the  most  delightful  and  the  most  desirable 
from  the  greatest  variety  of  standpoints. 

5.  The  Country  Beautiful.  Time  and  space  are  all  too 
short  for  saying  all  that  ought  to  be  said  about  the  human 
side  of  agricultural  development,  but  I  shall  steal  a  word 
and  a  moment  to  enter  a  plea  for  the  country  beautiful ; 
something  to  please  the  eye  and  uplift  the  soul ;  something 
beyond  the  body ;  something  that  shall  foreshadow  here 
what  heaven  may  be  hereafter. 

First  of  all,  I  plead  for  the  early  evolution  of  a  suitable 
country  architecture :  for  house  and  barn  exteriors  that 
shall  blend  with  the  natural  features  of  their  surroundings. 
We  build  a  barn  on  the  ugliest  lines  that  human  ingenuity 
can  devise,  often  "  go  the  limits  "  by  painting  it  red,  and 
then  wonder  why  it  is  so  often  struck  by  lightning. 

Let  the  country  house  be  built  on  good  lines  within  and 
without.  Let  it  be  generously  and  hospitably  big,  with 
broad  low  roof  and  wide  projection.  Let  it  be  surrounded 
by  porches  wide  and  deep ;  and  inside,  let  the  rooms  be 
generous  and  the  stairways  broad.  Let  the  colors  every- 
where be  strong  but  soft,  and  outside  let  it  blend  into  its 
setting  of  lawn  and  trees  as  if  this  home  had  been  builded  in 
a  spot  which  Nature  had  made  expressly  for  the  place 
where  a  family  might  live  and  where  children  might  be 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE       167 

born  and  grow  up  and  go  out  into  the  world  to  engage  in 
and  succeed  in  many  things,  but  never  to  forget  the  child- 
hood home  of  blessed  memory. 

This  is  a  sentimental  side  of  our  business,  I  know,  but 
after  all,  sentiment  is  the  strongest  thing  in  the  world,  and 
you  and  I  may  not  know  the  racial  asset  of  a  dozen  gen- 
erations born  and  reared  in  such  homes  as  may  now  be 
estabUshed  on  the  farm. 

It  is  traditional  to  assume  a  plain,  hard  life,  destitute  of 
comforts,  for  the  family  on  the  farm.  In  this  we  err. 
Nothing  is  farther  from  the  essential.  We  cannot  build 
and  maintain  a  permanent  agriculture  on  that  proposition. 
In  such  an  assumption  we  confuse  the  necessary  hard- 
ships of  the  pioneer  with  the  possibilities  of  the  open 
country. 

Farming  and  pioneering  started  off  together,  and  the  life 
of  the  pioneer  farmer  was  hard,  not  because  he  was  a  farmer, 
but  because  he  was  a  pioneer.  Nature  was  unsubdued. 
Men  and  women  were  poor,  and  life  was  hard  at  the  best 
when  necessities  were  counted  luxuries.  But  those  days 
are  over  on  real  agricultural  lands,  and  farming  is  coming 
into  its  own.  There  are  non-agricultural  lands  where 
country  life  will  continue  hard,  but  this  is  not  American 
agriculture.     These  are  not  farmers. ^ 

Look  for  American  agriculture  on  agricultural  lands  and 
you  will  find  it  in  any  state  of  the  Union.  Here  pioneering 
and  farming  have  parted  company  forever.  Farming  will 
go  its  way  on  its  own  plan,  and  if  you  look  for  it  here,  you 


1  No  greater  mistake  can  be  made  than  by  assuming  that  every  inhabitant  of  the  country 
is  a  farmer.  The  man  who  lives  in  the  hills  and  obtains  a  precarious  living  by  a  combination 
of  hunting,  fishing,  and  loafing  is  no  more  a  farmer  than  is  the  peanut  peddler  on  the  street 
corner  a  merchant.  Men  are  first  of  all  countrymen  and  citizens  from  choice  of  habitation  ; 
after  that  comes  the  question  of  occupation.  This  is  why  the  millions  living  wretchedly  in  the 
congested  city  can  never  be  moved  upon  the  land. 


i68  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

will  find  it  a  thousand  years  from  now.  I  wonder  what  it 
will  be  like  ?  The  people  then  will  be  our  descendants  — 
yours  and  mine.  I  wonder  what  they  will  think  of  us,  and 
how  they  will  record  history  between  now  and  then.  I 
should  like  to  be  well  thought  of  by  them,  for  they  ought 
to  be  a  very  superior  people,  and  they  will  be  if  we  are  all 
wise,  for  what  they  are  then  will  depend  not  a  little  upon 
what  we  do  now. 

Let  us  at  once  set  about  building  country  homes  that 
shall  last  for  generations.  Let  us  give  them  plenty  of 
room,  with  broad  lawns  and  much  grass.  Let  there  be 
some  flowers  and  shrubbery  to  add  a  touch  of  brightness, 
but  above  all,  let  there  be  trees ^  trees ^  long-lived  trees ^  that 
will  tell  the  children  of  the  future  that  their  grandfathers, 
who  are  we,  took  thought  for  them.  Let  the  whole  picture 
have  its  setting  in  a  natural  frame  of  forests  and  of  hills, 
of  fields  where  cattle  be,  of  meadows  and  lakes  and  run- 
ning water.  So  shall  we  build,  and  in  this  way  also  leave 
our  best  thoughts  behind.  So  will  the  farm  at  last  come 
into  its  own. 

6.  The  Country  Educated.  I  now  come  to  the  last, 
which  is  also  the  greatest  of  the  separate  features  of  agri- 
cultural development.  I  refer  to  the  education  and  the 
culture  of  the  men  and  women  who  shall  live  upon  the  land 
and  till  our  soil  —  it  is  ours  and  not  theirs  —  who  shall  think 
our  thoughts  as  we  cannot  think  them  amid  the  stress  and 
strain  and  struggle  of  the  city ;  who  shall  keep  the  country 
as  the  great  breeding  ground  where  children  may  grow  up 
into  men  and  women  without  that  prematurity  and  that 
dangerous  sophistication  that  mark  so  many  of  the  city 
bom  and  bred. 

This  matter  involves  the  whole  philosophy  of  agricul- 
tural education,  both  of  collegiate  and  secondary  grade ;  in- 


DEVELOPMENT   OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE       169 

deed,  it  covers  a  large  part  of  our  educational  effort,  for  it 
involves  the  education  of  nearly  half  our  population. 

Agricultural  education  is  but  a  feature,  albeit  a  large 
and  important  one,  but  none  the  less  it  is  a  feature  of  our 
system  of  universal  education,  and  the  spirit  and  purpose 
of  our  system  of  universal  education,  as  I  understand  it,  is 
this  :  so  to  educate  all  men  as  to  make  them  first  of  all  self- 
supporting  and  useful  contributors  to  some  feature  —  no 
matter  what  —  of  the  public  good;  and  second,  to  encourage 
and  develop  in  their  several  personalities  the  best  that  is 
in  them  as  human  beings  and  members  of  a  rapidly  advanc- 
ing society  whose  capabilities,  if  not  unlimited,  are  as  yet 
unknown. 

Universal  education  is  an  attempt  to  make  the  most  not 
only  of  the  exceptional  man,  but  of  all  normal  men,  the 
masses  of  whom  really  represent  the  race  and  limit  its 
achievements  and  advance.  As  nearly  half  the  people  live 
by  farming,  the  problem  of  agricultural  education  shoulders 
approximately  one  half  the  problem  of  universal  education, 
at  least  so  far  as  numbers  go ;  moreover,  it  is  the  half  that 
will  have  more  than  its  share  to  do  in  fixing  the  future  of 
all  classes.  How  shall  agricultural,  education  be  conducted 
so  as  to  meet  these  broad  requirements  felt  alike  by  farmers 
and  all  other  members  of  our  social  body  ? 

First  of  all,  agricultural  education  must  be  so  conducted 
as  to  make  the  farmers  efficient  in  a  business  way.  It  has 
taken  more  than  a  generation  to  begin  to  find  all  that  is  in- 
volved in  this  single  feature  of  education  for  the  business 
of  farming,  and  few  men  yet  realize  that,  of  all  forms  of 
education,  that  in  technical  agriculture  is  the  most  costly 
if  it  is  made  good  enough  to  be  really  worth  while.  The 
young  man  does  not  want  to  study  about  cattle:  he 
needs  to  study  cattle  themselves ;   a  distinction  not  yet 


I70  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

observed,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  in  some  of  our  institutions  of 
learning. 

Young  men  who  are  fitting  themselves  for  farming  want 
not  a  mass  of  information  about  present  day  agricultural 
practice ;  that  will  pass,  and  it  ought  to  pass.  It  is  com- 
paratively easy  to  teach,  but  it  will  be  out  of  date  and  gone 
before  it  can  serve  a  man  now  in  school  as  a  definite  guide 
to  procedure.  What  he  wants  from  a  business  standpoint 
is  instruction  in  the  principles  involved  in  agriculture  so 
far  as  they  are  known  and  in  methods  of  investigation  after 
the  unknown,  that  he  may  keep  himself  intelligent  as  this 
great  business  of  agricultural  development  proceeds  before 
his  eyes  day  by  day. 

Furthermore,  they  want  this,  not  in  the  university  only, 
accessible  merely  to  those  who  may  go  to  college,  but  they 
want  it  and  must  have  it  in  every  high  school,  that  it  may 
be  accessible  from  the  home.  They  want  it  not  in  a  few 
congressional  district  schools  separated  from  everything 
else  educational,  but  they  want  it  wherever  men  from  the 
country  seek  an  education,  and  they  want  it  associated 
with  all  the  other  subjects  and  where  other  men  are  edu- 
cated. All  this  is  extremely  difficult  for  both  teacher  and 
student,  and  it  involves  an  expense  for  skilled  men,  for 
equipment  and  for  research,  such  as  is  not  yet  appreciated 
by  anybody,  much  less  by  public  men. 

Teachers  and  investigators  who  have  skill  in  this  line 
are  few  and  their  services  are  extremely  valuable,  so  valua- 
ble that  the  state  which  fills  its  quota  with  the  best  must 
stand  ready  to  pay  teaching  salaries  such  as  have  never  yet 
been  paid.  They  must  also  devote  money  to  equipment  and 
facilities  for  research  to  an  extent  which  makes  all  that  has 
yet  been  done  look  microscopic  and  miserable  —  all  this 
must  be  done  if  this  development  of  agriculture  is  to  pro- 


DEVELOPMENT   OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE       171 

ceed  along  all  these  lines  as  fast  and  as  surely  as  it  ought 
to  proceed. 

So  much  for  the  technical  side :  for  what  a  man  must 
know  if  he  is  to  occupy  the  soil  of  the  public  domain  to  the 
best  advantage  to  himself  and  to  the  state.  Because  of  what 
I  am  about  to  say  and  lest  I  then  be  misunderstood,  let  me 
remark  before  passing,  that  I  am  a  stickler  for  technical 
education  both  collegiate  and  secondary  and  for  agricul- 
tural research  of  the  most  strictly  technical  character 
beyond  anything  that  any  man  has  ever  yet  dared  to 
propose. 

But  that  is  not  all.  There  remains  a  human  side  to 
agriculture.  The  farmer  is  not  only  a  tiller  of  the  soil ;  he 
is  a  man  and  a  member  of  our  permanent  society;  moreover, 
he  is  a  voting  member  of  the  body  politic.  This  is  only 
another  way  of  saying  that  as  a  man  he  possesses  inherent 
privileges  for  himself  and  owes  therefor  substantial  duties 
to  the  community  quite  outside  and  beyond  the  limits  of 
his  vocation  and  his  education. 

So  I  enter  a  protest  against  that  philosophy  of  education 
and  that  system  of  schools  which  would  by  design  or  by 
necessity  confine  the  education  of  a  farmer  or  of  any  other 
man,  industrial  or  non-industrial,  to  the  limits  of  his  voca- 
tional and  business  needs,  and  I  protest  against  the  estab- 
lishment of  separate  agricultural  schools  in  this  country  for 
the  same  reasons  that  I  protest  against  the  exclusion  of 
the  farmer  from  good  society  or  from  any  other  common 
interest  of  American  development. 

Every  man  is,  or  ought  to  be,  bigger  than  his  business. 
He  does  not  and  should  not  be  so  educated  as  to  live  for  his 
business.  He  is  in  business  that  he  may  live,  and  the  large 
question  — the  largest  of  all  questions  before  any  man  —  is, 
what  shall  he  do  with  himself.?  what  shall  he  do  with  the 


172  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENT 

result  of  his  earnings  ?  what  shall  he  do  with  his  leisure  ? 
how  shall  he  justify  his  existence  ?  He  has  a  right  to  be 
so  educated  as  to  answer  these  questions,  which  are  final ; 
to  be  in  business  for  something  other  than  to  conduct  busi- 
ness or  to  while  away  the  time. 

A  good  part  of  the  education  of  the  farmer  as  of  other 
men  is,  or  should  be,  non-vocational,  and  of  such  character 
as  shall  best  suit  his  individual  tastes  and  surroundings. 
It  will  be  history  and  economics  for  one,  philosophy  for 
another,  language  and  the  classics  for  a  third,  music,  paint- 
ing, or  some  other  form  of  art  for  others  —  I  care  not  what 
it  is,  provided  it  is  something  that  develops  human  facul- 
ties outside  vocational  needs,  and  if  only  it  serves  to 
broaden  rather  than  to  narrow,  which  is  the  inevitable 
consequence  of  exclusive  technical  training. 

I  therefore  enter  a  plea  and  a  demand  for  the  broadest 
possible  views  regarding  agricultural  education.  The 
farmer  as  a  man  is  not  different  from  other  men  unless  we 
make  him  so  by  our  education,  and  if  we  do  the  time  will 
come  when  other  men  of  other  classes  will  share  with  him 
the  consequences  of  a  shortsighted  and  inadequate  system 
of  education  for  industrial  purposes. 

A  scheme  for  the  education  of  farmers  in  separate 
schools  is  being  industriously  advocated  in  these  days  by  a 
class  of  educators  who  seem  to  feel  that  a  little  education, 
and  that  almost  exclusively  technical,  is  sufficient  for  farm- 
ing purposes,  and  that  the  European  peasant  school  is 
a  model.  The  advocates  of  this  sort  of  school  overlook 
certain  important  features  of  agricultural  education  and  of 
the  philosophy  of  education  in  general :  they  overlook  the 
fact  that  the  prospective  farmer  should  be  educated  as  a 
man  as  well  as  a  farmer ;  in  other  words,  that  the  farmer's, 
like  every  man's,  education  should  include  both  the  tech- 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE       173 

nical  and  the  non-technical,  both  the  vocational  and  the 
non-vocational. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  we  cannot  safely  educate 
separate  professions  in  separate  schools,  for  to  do  so  is  to 
build  up  distinct  classes,  each  educated  for  and  prejudiced 
in  its  own  affairs  and  against  the  world. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  there  is  a  great  body  of 
knowledge  that  can  form  the  background  and  the  backbone 
of  the  education  of  all  men  for  all  pursuits,  and  that  this 
is  our  chief  reliance  for  holding  our  people  together  as  one 
people. 

They  overlook  the  highly  educational  influence  of  mere 
association  with  other  men  as  secured  in  universities  which 
fit  for  all  the  affairs  of  life. 

They  overlook  the  capacity  of  the  American  secondary 
school  still  further  to  broaden  its  curriculum  and  widen  its 
educational  influence.  This  thoroughly  unique  American 
institution  is  abundantly  able  to  reflect  in  its  atmosphere 
and  its  class  rooms  the  same  cosmopolitan  influence 
that  constitutes  the  chief  distinction  of  American  uni- 
versities. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  our  high  schools  are  not 
"  city  schools  "  wholly  given  over  to  the  affairs  of  the  city. 
They  are  schools  of  the  people  in  the  best  and  highest 
sense  of  the  term,  willing  and  able  to  reflect  all  the  major 
interests  of  the  people  of  their  respective  communities, 
and  to  denominate  as  a  **  city  school "  every  school  in  a 
village  of  2000,  and  therefore,  as  a  school  where  agricul- 
ture presumably  should  not  be  taught  is,  to  say  the  least, 
un-American. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  to  establish  separate  agri- 
cultural schools  of  an  inferior  grade  for  country  people 
would  fail  to  serve  with  the  education  best  suited  to  their 


174  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

need  that  large  element  of  the  country-born  that  is  not 
adapted  to  farm  life. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  the  European  system  of 
education  was  evolved  after  distinct  social  classes  had  been 
established  by  generations  of  political  and  economic  influ- 
ences whose  repetition  in  America  it  was  the  special  pur- 
pose of  our  Puritan  forefathers  to  prevent. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  in  America  the  country  peo- 
ple have  not  yet  been  peasantized,  but  that  so  far  we  are  a 
homogeneous  people  except  for  immigration,  which  is  prin- 
cipally a  city  and  not  a  country  problem. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  to  educate  farmers  by  them- 
selves in  separate  schools  almost  purely  technical  and  dis- 
tinctly inferior  both  in  breadth  and  intensity  to  the  high 
schools  in  which  other  classes  are  educated — that  to  do 
this  thing  is  to  peasantize  the  farmers  more  rapidly  and 
more  completely  than  they  were  ever  peasantized  in  Europe 
or  than  would  be  possible  by  any  other  method  that  could 
be  devised  by  the  ingenuity  of  man. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  to  peasantize  the  schools 
wherein  farmers  may  be  educated  is  to  peasantize  the 
farmers  themselves,  the  first  effect  of  which  is  to  put 
them  out  of  sympathy  with  other  classes,  and  the  other 
effect  will  be  to  Umit  their  very  ability  as  occupants  and 
managers  of  the  land  and  their  economic  efficiency  as 
farmers,  after  which  will  be  due  and  payable  to  men  of  all 
interests  and  all  classes  the  social  and  poUtical  conse- 
quences of  this  proposed  educational  sin. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  this  sort  of  educational  phi- 
losophy, extended  to  its  conclusion,  would  demand  that  all 
men  be  educated  exclusively  to  vocational  ends,  each  class 
in  its  separate  schools,  out  of  touch  and  out  of  sympathy 
with  the  rights  and  ideals  and  ambitions  of  other  classes, 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE       175 

the  only  final  consequence  of  which  is  social  chaos  and 
political  anarchy,  because  if  our  people  are  once  broken  up 
into  classes  according  to  occupation,  they  can  never  again 
be  amalgamated. 

They  overlook  what  has  been  achieved  in  universities, 
wherein  men  of  all  conceivable  purposes  are  educated  both 
separately  and  together  in  a  common  atmosphere  of  demo- 
cratic wholesomeness. 

I  would  have  Americans  so  educated  that  in  a  company 
you  cannot  tell  by  the  dress,  the  language,  or  the  manner 
of  a  man  what  his  occupation  is. 


CHAPTER  XI 
THE  MEANING  OF  AGRICULTURE 

Introduction 

Every  man  may  fairly  ask  himself  this  question :  What 
concern  is  it  of  mine  whether  agriculture  succeeds  or  not ; 
for  what  difference  does  it  make  to  the  banker,  the  mer- 
chant, the  manufacturer,  to  the  clerk,  the  teacher,  and  the 
preacher,  to  the  butcher,  the  baker,  and  the  candlestick 
maker,  whether  crop  yields  are  abundant  or  meager; 
whether  the  farmer  is  rich  or  poor,  learned  or  ignorant, 
wise  or  foolish;  whether  his  home  is  comfortable  or 
destitute ;  and  whether  his  family  is  cultivated  or  boorish  ? 
Aside  from  general  humanitarian  considerations,  what 
difference  does  it  make  to  anybody  but  the  farmer  whether 
agriculture  is  prosperous  or  not  ? 

This  is  a  fundamental  question  that  lies  at  the  root  of 
many  matters.  Answering  it,  I  should  say  that  every 
difference  to  everybody  is  involved  in  the  proposition 
whether  or  not  we  are  developing  an  adequate  agriculture, 
and  a  typical  American  citizen  on  the  farm ;  for  if  we  are 
not,  then  no  man  is  so  intrenched  or  so  obscure  but  the 
mistakes  and  shortcomings  of  the  farmer  will  ultimately 
find  him  out.  If  the  food  supply  is  short,  unreliable,  or 
expensive,  everybody  suffers,  the  farmer  last  of  all.  If 
conditions  of  country  living  are  inferior,  the  farmer  suffers 
first,  but  he  ultimately  involves  all  classes  in  his  misfortune. 

176 


THE  MEANING  OF  AGRICULTURE  177 

The  Importance  of  Agriculture 

Except  among  students  of  economics,  agriculture,  like 
other  common  things,  has  been  regarded  usually  as  of 
slight  consequence  when  compared  with  the  more  spec- 
tacular or  unusual  activities  of  life,  and  it  is  only  in  the 
present  century  that  anything  like  a  widespread  interest 
in  or  appreciation  of  our  fundamental  industry  has  mani- 
fested itself. 

This  traditional  attitude  of  indifference  toward  farming 
is  philosophically  and  scientifically  wrong,  because  any 
common  thing  must  be  of  fundamental  importance  to  the 
race  or  it  would  not  be  common.  In  the  primitive  state 
of  society  everybody  is  a  farmer  —  or  a  hunter  —  which 
amounts  to  the  same  thing.  As  society  becomes  organized 
and  industries  differentiated,  the  number  needed  to  secure 
food  is  reduced  and  an  increasing  proportion  of  the  people 
can  be  released  for  other  service.^  But  with  all  the  aid 
of  animals  and  of  machinery,  a  full  third  of  our  people  are 
directly  engaged  in  farming,  and  this  appears  to  be  about 
the  proportion  needed.  Now  an  occupation  that  com- 
mands the  services  and  the  lives  of  a  third  of  the  popula- 
tion must  be  full  of  meaning,  both  economically,  socially, 
and  politically;  and  manifestly  it  cannot  be  neglected 
except  to  the  direct  injury  of  great  masses  of  people  and 
ultimately  to  the  common  hurt  of  all  classes. 

Let  no  man  for  a  moment  forget  that  farming  is  the 

1  This  is  why  the  percentage  of  fanners  in  America  is  gradually  decreasing  and  that  of 
other  industries  increasing,  as  it  should.  In  our  grandfathers'  day  everybody  was  a  fanner, 
for  there  were  yet  no  cities.  Why  should  we  expect  the  proportion  of  farmers  always  to 
remain  loo  per  cent,  and  why  should  we  deplore  the  advent  of  other  industries,  providing 
agriculture  is  not  prevented  from  rendering  adequate  service  ?  No,  our  troubles  are  not 
inherent  in  the  growth  of  other  industries ;  but  if  anywhere,  they  are  in  the  non-development 
or  the  wrong  development  of  farming.  Despite  what  is  said  to  the  contrary,  the  develop- 
ment of  city  occupations  is  a  sign,  not  of  decadence,  but  rather  of  progress,  and  of  an 
advancing,  not  a  retrograding,  civilization. 


178  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

production  of  food  and  that  food  is  the  largest  fundamental 
fact  in  life.  Every  man,  woman,  and  child  must  eat  every 
day,  winter  and  summer,  in  season  and  out  of  season,  and 
every  mouthful  of  the  food  must  come  out  of  the  ground. 
Let  crops  fail  for  a  twelvemonth  and  the  world  would  be  a 
vast  cemetery  —  nothing  more.  The  land  and  the  farmer, 
therefore,  are  basic  elements  not  to  be  ignored,  for  we  must 
exist  before  we  can  do  or  be  anything  worth  while.  More- 
over, a  hungry  man  in  any  age  is  a  savage,  and  the  first 
step  in  civilization  is  literally  to  feed  the  brute  and  to  keep 
him  fed.  In  a  very  immediate  and  perfect  sense  our  civili- 
zation and  the  exercise  of  our  higher  faculties  are  condi- 
tional upon  ample  and  suitable  food. 

We  cannot,  however,  take  food  for  granted,  as  we  do  the 
sunshine  and  the  rain.  It  is  not  showered  upon  us,  nor 
does  it  grow  spontaneously,  but  it  must  be  produced  with 
great  labor.  Indeed,  more  than  half  of  all  the  toil,  thought, 
and  exertion  of  the  earth  are  expended  in  the  getting  of 
something  to  eat.  So  difficult  is  it  to  secure  food  that  no 
race,  nor  even  city,  has  ever  solved  the  problem  of  insuring 
enough  for  all  its  people. 

^  Beside  food  all  other  necessities  dwindle  and  luxuries 
sink  into  insignificance.  There  is  no  crime  in  the  calendar 
that  men  will  not  commit  for  food,  because  with  hunger 
comes  not  only  distress  but  also  a  blunting  of  the  faculties, 
and  as  long  as  any  considerable  proportion  of  our  people 
are  underfed,  the  house  of  our  social  family  is  yet  upon 
the  sand. 

The  Evolution  of  Agriculture 

The  process  by  which  farming  develops  from  hunting 
and  the  ways  in  which  civilization  is  influenced  by  the  food 
supply  form  a  fascinating  chapter  in  early  human  history. 


THE  MEANING  OF  AGRICULTURE  179 

It  has  been  oft  rewritten  —  centuries  ago  with  long  for- 
gotten races  and  only  yesterday  with  our  Indians,  the 
South  Sea  Islanders,  and  the  African  tribes.  The  varia- 
tions are  many,  but  the  essentials  few,  well-known,  and 
easily  sketched. 

The  scene  is  generally  laid  on  the  river  bank  or  the  lake 
front,  for  water  affords  the  best  primitive  means  of  travel. 
Here  live  in  tribes  these  human  animals  —  this  raw  material 
out  of  which  the  higher  races  develop  by  the  slow  processes 
of  evolution.  For  natural  reasons  a  slight  division  of 
labor  is  established  between  men  and  women,  for  man  is  by 
instinct  strongly  carnivorous,  and  as  with  other  animals, 
his  only  occupation  is  getting  food.  It  is  the  men  who  pro- 
vide the  game  and  beat  off  rival  tribes  that  encroach  upon 
the  hunting  grounds,  but  it  is  the  women  who  maintain  the 
camp,  care  for  the  young,  and  dress  and  prepare  the  game 
that  is  brought  in. 

But  hunting  is  a  precarious  means  of  subsistence,  and 
frequently  man  after  man  straggles  into  camp  empty- 
handed,  tired,  and  hungry,  perhaps  in  an  ugly  mood  be- 
cause of  the  fine  specimen  that  escaped  by  a  hair.  When 
things  go  well,  the  feast  may  be  followed  by  revelry  and 
recitations  of  prowess,  but  no  man  is  joyous  on  an  empty 
stomach  and  nobody  sings  of  defeat.  Against  contin- 
gencies such  as  this  the  women  provide  fish  from  the  river, 
berries  in  season,  tender  roots  and  shoots,  nuts  of  trees 
scattered  through  the  wilderness,  and  seeds  of  tall  grasses 
growing  on  the  bottoms.  Everything  is  acceptable  to  an 
empty  stomach,  besides  affording  a  welcome  variety  even 
when  meat  is  abundant.  Moreover,  fruits  may  be  dried 
and  together  with  nuts  and  seeds,  stored  for  the  winter  or 
other  time  of  want  that  is  certain  to  come. 

Accordingly  the  favorite  berry  patches  and  nut-bearing 


i8o  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

trees  are  located,  preempted  by  squatter  sovereignty,  and 
defended  against  all  comers,  by  a  trial  of  strength  if  neces- 
sary. Thus  is  war  early  extended  to  women  and  to  chil- 
dren, who  learn  from  their  mothers  their  first  lessons  in 
both  verbal  and  physical  contest. 

Down  by  the  river,  where  the  grasses  and  the  tender 
herbs  grow,  the  weeds  and  the  bushes  are  cleared  away  in 
order  to  give  valuable  vegetables  a  better  chance ;  and  in 
the  clean  fresh  soil  left  behind  by  the  winter  floods,  seeds 
are  sown  and  carefully  tended  to  increase  the  certainty 
and  the  amount  of  the  food  supply.  Thus  women  were 
the  first  farmers,  and  fruits,  vegetables,  and  seeds  of  tall 
grasses  were  the  first  crops. 

As  these  agricultural  operations  develop,  the  supply  of 
food  becomes  more  abundant  and,  what  is  more  important, 
more  reliable.  The  growing  crops  afford  a  favorite  object 
of  attack  and  require  constant  guarding.  The  winter  stores 
become  larger  and  exceedingly  attractive  to  less  provident 
but  none  the  less  hungry  neighboring  tribes.  They  must 
be  protected  at  every  cost,  hence  fortified  villages  and  in 
time  walled  cities  appeared.  It  is  easier  to  steal  a  man's 
dinner  than  to  take  his  life,  and  if  his  stores  are  spoiled,  he 
himself  is  destroyed,  and  thus  it  was  that  the  fiercest  wars 
were  waged  about  the  growing  crops  and  the  winter  stores. 
Thus  arose  the  ancient  and  honorable  occupation  of  war, 
and  it  is  still  true  in  the  last  analysis  that  our  wars  are 
waged  around  food  and  the  land  to  produce  it. 

But  as  we  fight  fire  with  fire,  so  is  aggression  the  best 
method  of  defense,  and  instead  of  simply  guarding  the 
stores,  it  was  found  advantageous  to  raid  and  clean  up 
a  considerable  area  around  every  center  of  habitation  such 
as  has  been  described. 

In  this  way  the  Iroquois  within  recent  times  not  only 


THE  MEANING  OF  AGRICULTURE  i8i 

built  palisades  about  their  homes  and  granaries,  but  every 
summer  dispatched  raiding  parties  as  far  north  as  Canada, 
as  far  west  as  Illinois,  and  as  far  south  as  the  Carolinas, 
and  by  waging  wars  of  practical  extermination  effectually 
protected  themselves  during  the  growing  season  by  a  wide 
belt  of  uninhabited  territory.  Thus  was  war  made  honor- 
able and  thus  was  justified  in  a  way  much  that  would 
otherwise  now  pass  as  plain  cruelty. 

Even  slavery  had  its  early  compensations.  From  the 
first,  women  had  the  hard  side  of  life  —  the  drudgery  of 
camp,  and  the  abuse,  if  not  the  contempt,  of  the  stronger 
man ;  indeed,  the  early  savage  knew  but  one  more  satis- 
fying method  of  revenge  than  to  kill  his  adversary,  and 
that  was  to  take  him  home  and  turn  him  over  to  the  tender 
mercies  of  the  women  and  children  for  torture.  They  in 
turn  could  invent  no  more  refined  torment  for  a  warrior 
chief  than  to  make  him  "  work  like  a  woman."  Thus  the 
emancipation  of  woman  dated  from  the  day  when  her 
savage  mate  brought  home  the  captured  enemy  and  turned 
him  over  to  his  wife  for  a  slave.  After  that,  man  and 
woman  had  interests  in  common.  So  slavery,  the  first 
step  toward  the  emancipation  of  woman,  was  also  the  first 
step  in  civilization,  and  whatever  trouble  it  afterward 
made,  it  was  worth  to  humanity  all  it  cost. 

Enough  has  been  pointed  out  in  this  hasty  sketch  to 
show,  first,  that  originally  the  quest  of  food  required  all 
the  time  and  energies  of  man;  second,  that  women  were 
the  first  farmers;  third,  that  the  necessity  for  food  was 
the  original  cause  of  war;  fourth,  that  cities  necessarily 
grew  up  where  agriculture  furnished  an  abundant  food 
supply;  and  fifth,  that  the  first  lessons  in  leisure  and 
equality  followed  upon  slavery,  the  result  of  warfare  that 
saved  the  enemy's  life  for  the  labor  that  was  in  him. 


i82  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

As  food  becomes  abundant  in  the  evolution  upward, 
some  of  the  people  can  be  spared  not  only  for  war,  but 
for  manufacture,  and  a  surplus  of  goods  arises.  From 
manufacture,  therefore,  first  came  barter,  then  trade  with 
an  army  to  protect  the  caravan,  and  so  on  up  to  the 
modern  complicated  conditions,  about  which  we  all  know 
but  among  which  we  do  not  easily  distinguish  the  funda- 
mentals from  the  accessories  that  have  been  added  as  we 
have  developed.  Difficult  as  it  may  be,  it  is  important  for 
teaching  purposes  that  we  always  be  able  to  recognize  and 
single  out  the  fundamental  elements  and  activities  in 
human  affairs,  no  matter  how  complicated  conditions  may 
have  become,  for  experience  shows  that  we  are  prone  to 
lose  perspective  and  to  take  for  granted  many  things  that 
come  only  with  human  blood  and  the  sweat  of  the  brow 
of  some  man  long  forgotten,  but  none  the  less  a  hero.  In 
this  way  we  now  take  for  granted  much  that  was  bought 
with  a  price.  In  this  way,  too,  we  cherish  many  an  insti- 
tution like  slavery,  which  in  its  time  played  a  necessary 
role  but  long  outlived  its  usefulness. 

There  remains  only  in  this  connection  to  point  out  that 
back  at  the  beginning,  in  the  hunting  stage,  if  the  animals 
happened  to  be  large  and  of  the  grazing  kind,  dependent 
for  grass  upon  summer  or  winter  rains,  then  the  game 
would  migrate  with  the  season  and  the  tribe  must  follow, 
in  which  case  no  plantings  could  be  established,  no  cities 
builded,  and  nothing  would  tie  the  people  to  a  definite 
spot.  Such  a  tribe  would  remain  as  nomadic  as  the  game, 
and  land  could  have  only  a  passing  value  as  affording 
temporary  pasturage. 

Such  people  became  herdsmen,  dwelling  of  necessity  in 
tents  and,  beyond  defending  the  herds,  leading  a  lazy  life. 
Manufacturing  could  not  develop,  neither  could  commerce 


THE  MEANING  OF  AGRICULTURE  183 

or  any  settled  form  of  government ;  that  is  to  say,  under 
these  conditions  man  has  never  risen  above  and  cannot 
rise  much  above  the  self-sufficing  stage  of  existence.  Such 
was  the  condition  of  our  prairie  Indians  who  went  down 
under  the  onslaught  of  the  whites  working  from  an  assured 
base  of  supplies. 

Such  was  the  condition  of  the  early  Israelites  when 
Abraham  quit  raising  cattle  for  the  Babylonian  market 
and  started  off  into  the  wilderness  to  found  a  nation. 
The  limits  were  soon  attained,  and  within  three  gener- 
ations the  tribe  was  obliged  to  seek  food  of  a  settled  people, 
the  Egyptians,  incidentally  to  acquire  knowlege  and  culture 
by  the  hard  process  of  slavery,  and  in  the  end  to  preserve 
their  very  existence  as  by  a  miracle. 

Such  was  the  evolution  of  society,  but  the  original  and 
primitive  fact  still  remains ;  namely,  that  food  and  its 
getting  overshadow  all  other  considerations,  employing 
one-third  of  all  the  people  in  its  production,  and  requiring 
nearly  one-half  of  all  the  human  energy,  experience,  and 
training. 

The  Balance  of  Trade 

To  the  civilized,  therefore,  as  to  the  savage,  food  is  the 
first  great  consideration,  and  it  is  only  in  a  highly  organized 
society  like  our  own  that  we  lose  sight  of  fundamentals 
and  begin  to  take  our  breakfast  for  granted.  This  is  be- 
cause in  some  way  not  well  understood,  it  has  to  most  of 
us  always  appeared  upon  the  table  at  the  proper  time. 
Let  us  not  be  deceived,  however ;  the  line  that  hitches  us 
all  to  the  plow  is  not  very  long,  nor  is  it  very  indirect  in  its 
attachment. 

As  food  is  fundamental  in  life,  so  it  is  fundamental  in 
commerce,  and  we  have  always  relied  upon  bumper  crops 


i84  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

to  hold  the  balance  of  trade  in  our  favor.  When,  however, 
we  become  so  numerous  as  to  consume  all  we  can  raise, 
what  then  is  to  take  care  of  the  balance  of  trade  ? 

It  is  more  difficult  to  hold  this  balance  through  manu- 
factured articles  than  through  primary  necessities,  such  as 
food  and  lumber  —  commodities  which  all  the  world  must 
have  in  fairly  standard  form  and  in  fairly  constant  amount, 
and  when  we  can  no  longer  rely  upon  farming  to  hold  this 
advantage,  then  we  shall  learn  the  true  meaning  of  real 
competition  in  the  markets  of  the  world,  and  then  we  shall 
begin  to  realize  how  much  agriculture  has  done  for  us  in 
the  past  besides  merely  feeding  us. 

When  we  come  to  the  time  wherein  we  shall  attempt  to 
hold  this  balance  of  trade  through  manufactured  goods, 
then  we  shall  be  truly  competitors  in  the  world's  markets, 
and  the  task  of  upholding  American  standards  of  living 
will  have  just  begun.  I  would  have  you  realize,  if  you  can, 
how  much  we  have  in  the  past  depended  upon  the  virgin 
fertility  of  American  lands,  and  that  too  without  being  con- 
scious of  the  real  source  of  our  strength  or  even  very 
grateful  to  the  medium  through  which  it  has  come  to  us  — 
the  farmer  and  his  land. 

Many  of  our  popular  writers  do  not  know  that  the  fertile 
lands  of  England,  Germany,  and  Denmark  owe  their  rich- 
ness largely  to  the  fertility  shipped  abroad  in  our  own  ex- 
ported corn,  cotton,  and  linseed  meal,  and  to  our  phosphate 
rock,  of  which  Germany  now  takes  over  half  the  product 
of  our  mines.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  civiliza- 
tion and  indeed  the  cities  of  modern  Europe  have  been 
built  up  largely  by  the  products  of  other  lands,  chiefly 
American. 

The  principle  was  well  illustrated  by  a  remark  made  to 
the  writer  some   twenty-five   years  ago   by  that  pioneer 


THE  MEANING  OF  AGRICULTURE  185 

English  experimenter,  Sir  Henry  Gilbert.  At  that  time 
we  were  shipping  both  corn  and  cattle  to  England  in  large 
amounts.  He  said  :  "  As  long  as  you  Americans  are  will- 
ing to  sell  us  your  fat  cattle  for  the  cost  of  herding  and 
your  corn  for  the  cost  of  planting  and  harvesting,  throwing 
in  the  fertility  in  both  cases,  we  shall  get  on  very  well,  but 
when  you  learn,  as  you  sometime  will,  that  you  are  thereby 
depleting  your  lands  and  begin  to  keep  your  corn  at  home, 
feeding  it  to  your  own  cattle  and  retaining  the  fertility  upon 
your  lands,  then  God  pity  the  British  farmer."  Such  were 
the  words  of  the  sage  of  Rothamsted  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago,  and  his  prophecy  is  beginning  to  be  fulfilled,  for  we 
have  already  begun  to  feed  our  lands,  and  when  that  once 
becomes  the  common  practice  we  shall  be  through  mining 
out  and  giving  away  what  has  been  our  most  valuable 
asset ;  namely,  the  virgin  fertility  of  lands  that  have  been 
thousands  of  years  in  the  making.  So  much  has  farming 
done  for  us  and  for  others  in  our  trade  relations. 


The  Ultimate  Condition 

In  the  evolution  of  society  it  is  in  every  way  better  when 
the  methods  of  food  production  become  so  organized  and 
improved  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  people  can  be  re- 
leased from  the  primary  business  of  hunting  food  and  left 
free  to  follow  other  callings.  This  highly  desirable  con- 
dition is  only  recently  beginning  to  be  realized.  In  our 
own  fathers'  time  nearly  everybody  was  a  farmer  living  on 
the  self-sufficing  plan,  and  the  only  manufactures  were 
those  of  the  home,  employing  the  spare  time  not  required 
in  the  more  serious  business  of  getting  food.  It  is  only 
recently  that  we  have  been  able  to  engage  in  manufacture 
systematically. 


i86  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

Now  that  one-third  of  the  people  can  feed  the  whole, 
the  other  two-thirds  are  free  to  manufacture,  to  trade,  to 
teach,  and  to  engage  in  the  thousand  and  one  activities 
indispensable  to  the  complicated  life  of  a  highly  developed 
race.  All  this  is  to  the  advantage,  not  only  of  society, 
but  of  the  farmer,  because  those  who  are  not  producing 
food  must  buy  it,  not  only  making  a  market  for  the  surplus 
of  the  farm,  but  affording  an  incentive  and  a  means  for 
developing  agriculture  out  of  the  old  self-suiBcing  systems 
in  which  each  family  undertook  to  produce  only  enough 
to  "  bread  it  through,"  into  the  higher  condition  of  a  pro- 
ductive industry,  viz.,  farming  for  money  by  selling  the 
product,  not  merely  the  surplus.  In  this  way  farming  has 
been  developed  into  a  business. 

This  being  true,  we  can  have  no  sympathy  with  the  oft- 
repeated  assumption  that  the  times  are  out  of  joint  because 
a  smaller  percentage  of  the  total  population  lives  on  farms 
than  in  the  early  days  when  no  cities  had  yet  developed 
and  when  every  man  was  a  farmer.  This  so-called  drift 
from  the  country  to  the  town  is  of  itself  perfectly  normal 
and  in  every  way  desirable,  providing  four  conditions  are 
not  violated :  — 

1.  That  the  numbers  going  to  town  are  not  dispropor- 
tionately large,  giving  rise  to  scarcity  of  labor  in  the  country 
and  to  enforced  idleness  in  the  city. 

2.  That  the  intelligence,  morality,  and  thrift  of  those 
left  behind  is  not  reduced  by  the  exodus ;  that  is  to  say, 
that  the  exodus  represent  a  fair  assortment,  not  a  debili- 
tating draft. 

3.  That  no  great  proportion  of  those  moving  to  town 
shall  be  of  the  land-owning,  leisure  class  who  are  simply  re- 
tiring from  productive  activity.  Such  families  in  any  large 
number  are  only  a  parasitic  menace  to  society. 


THE  MEANING  OF  AGRICULTURE  187 

4.  That  the  drift  to  the  town  be  ultimately  offset  by  a 
counter  drift  from  the  city  to  the  land  —  a  movement 
already  well  set  in  and  from  certain  points  of  view  alarm- 
ingly large. 

Measured  by  these  conditions  there  is  some  cause  for 
concern,  but  little  for  alarm.  There  is  shortage  of  labor  in 
the  country  at  certain  seasons  and  some  overplus  in  the 
cities.  Both  are  natural  and  to  be  expected  when  we 
reflect  that  many  people  not  themselves  resourceful  abhor 
the  quiet  of  the  country,  that  the  city  is  the  natural  Mecca 
of  the  derelict,  because  chances  of  employment  there  seem 
numerically  greater,  and  last  of  all,  that  agriculture  is  not 
an  ideal  employer  of  labor,  its  operations  being  decidedly 
seasonal. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  the  most  desirable  people  are 
deserting  the  country  in  disproportionate  numbers  at  the 
present  time,  whatever  may  have  been  true  a  generation 
ago,  when  the  sorting  process  began  under  the  abnormal 
conditions  immediately  following  the  Civil  War.  By  all 
accounts  at  the  present  time  the  people  of  the  country  are 
fully  the  equal  of  those  of  the  cities,  certainly  if  we  are 
considering  averages  or  future  prospects. 

The  sudden  rise  of  land  following  the  extreme  and  rapid 
development  of  industries  other  than  agriculture  has 
enabled  many  landowners  to  move  to  town,  the  impelling 
influence  being  to  secure  superior  educational  advantages 
for  the  children  —  an  entirely  laudable  purpose  and  fully 
justified  as  a  temporary  expedient,  providing  it  does  not 
spoil  instead  of  educate  and  does  not  create  a  permanent 
leisure  class  of  land-holding  citizens,  renting  to  tenants 
predestined  to  peasanthood.  The  protection  at  this  point 
is  the  country  school,  which  for  safety's  sake  must  be  made 
and  kept  the  equal  of  the  city  school,  even  if  it  takes  both 


i88  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

state  and  federal  aid  to  do  it.  The  child  is  a  prospective 
citizen,  not  of  his  community  alone,  but  of  his  state  and 
nation,  and  the  general  public  must  see  that  his  education 
be  not  inferior  because  of  the  mere  accident  of  birth.  Here 
again  the  school  holds  the  key  to  healthy  progress. 

The  important  duty  of  schooling  cannot  be  left  to  the 
community,  for  often  the  community  is  not  free  to  act  —  a 
condition  illustrated  by  a  remark  of  a  certain  Southern 
farmer  who  is  reported  to  have  said,  **  My  niggers  are  not 
going  to  school  and  that  settles  it "  —  "  my  niggers  "  being 
his  tenants.  Nor  is  this  different  in  effect  from  the 
attitude  of  many  a  Northern  retired  farmer,  who  turns  up 
at  school  meetings  that  he  may  oppose  better  schools  for 
the  children  of  his  renters,  while  his  own  young  people  are 
riding  in  automobiles  and  spending  money  like  water. 
Both  spell  disaster  at  some  time. 

Until  recently  all  trails  led  to  town,  but  now  a  counter 
current  has  set  in,  and  it  appears  to  be  altogether  healthy. 
Almost  half  the  students  in  our  agricultural  colleges  come 
from  cities  of  over  five  thousand.  Many  of  these  are  the 
older  sons  of  the  land-owning  families  recently  mentioned 
and  represent  real  country  people  only  temporarily  city 
residents  for  the  purpose  of  education,  but  many  are  in  no 
sense  country  people,  as  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  12 
per  cent  of  the  agricultural  students  of  Illinois  are  from  the 
city  of  Chicago.  That  these  students  are  mostly  headed 
for  the  land  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  over  70  per  cent  of 
the  graduates  are  actually  upon  farms,  and  that  95  per 
cent  are  working  within  the  field  of  agriculture. 

This  is  substantially  true  everywhere.  All  over  the 
world  thinking  men  of  all  classes  are  now  regarding  agri- 
culture as  never  before,  and  a  profound  readjustment  as 
between  city  and  country  is  taking  place.     Dr.  Sato,  recent 


THE  MEANING  OF  AGRICULTURE  189 

exchange  professor  from  Sapparo,  tells  me  that  in  Japan 
almost  half  the  agricultural  students  come  from  the  cities 
and  towns.  In  India  a  son  of  the  Hindu  poet,  Tagore, 
recently  a  graduate  of  the  agricultural  course  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Illinois,  is  giving  his  personal  attention  to  the 
family  lands  in  a  way  hitherto  unknown  in  that  part  of 
the  world. 

The  Need  for  Rural  Credit  System 

It  looks,  therefore,  as  if  we  of  this  country  need  as  yet 
feel  no  great  anxiety  about  the  exodus  to  the  city,  except 
as  it  may  represent  a  permanent  leisure  class  depending 
for  its  support  upon  the  earnings  of  land  left  behind. 
This  possible  condition,  moreover,  must  be  watched,  and 
herein  lies  the  real  reason  for  a  rural  credit  system  whereby  a 
landless  young  man  can  enjoy  some  chance  for  acquiring 
land.  It  is  a  matter  of  surprise  that  so  many  well-informed 
men  see  no  need  of  a  special  land  credit  system.  They 
say  that  the  farmer  has  not  asked  for  it  and  that  he  can 
already  borrow  under  the  most  favorable  terms. 

So  he  can  if  he  be  a  landowner,  but  it  is  not  the  land- 
owning class  that  is  needing  relief.  How  is  the  young 
man  without  money  to  secure  land  at  two  hundred  dollars 
an  acre  with  no  system  of  credit  but  short-time  loans  at  6 
per  cent }  We  need,  not  so  much  as  a  favor  to  the  indi- 
vidual as  a  measure  of  safety  to  society,  a  long-credit  land- 
buying  plan  similar  to  that  provided  by  the  building  asso- 
ciations, whereby  payments  slightly  in  excess  of  rent  will 
ultimately  acquire  a  title. 

Without  some  such  plan  landholdings  will  increase  in 
size  and  home  owners  decrease,  for  with  high-priced  land 
under  the  present  credit  system  an  estate  cannot  be  settled 
among  its  heirs  unless  it  be  put  upon  the  market  and  sold. 


igo  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

The  time  has  already  passed  when  one  of  the  children  can 
undertake  to  "pay  off  the  heirs,"  as  the  saying  went  a 
generation  ago.  The  consequence  is  that  the  only  possible 
buyer  is  a  capitalist,  in  all  probability  a  landowner  already, 
seeking  to  enlarge  his  holdings  and  thereby  increase  his 
income  by  additional  rentals.  Such  a  system  is  bound  to 
produce  the  conditions  involved  in  the  remark  that  seven 
men  own  Scotland,  if  indeed  they  do  not  invite  the  same 
conditions  that  now  wreck  Mexico. 

It  is  startling  to  reflect  upon  the  fact  that  within  the  life- 
time of  most  people  of  middle  age,  land  that  was  once  to 
be  had  for  homesteading  or  for  a  dollar  and  a  quarter  an 
acre  is  now  practically  out  of  reach  of  any  but  the  wealthy, 
and  that  it  will  so  remain  until  we  have  a  change  in  our 
credit  system,  not  in  the  interest  of  the  land-holding  farmer, 
but  of  the  landless  man  seeking  an  opportunity  of  owning 
a  home. 

This  all  seems  far  from  our  business  as  school  teachers, 
but  it  is  well  that  we  understand  somewhat  the  influences 
lying  at  the  bottom  of  that  most  dangerous  of  all  questions, 
—  agrarian  discontent. 

The  Meaning  of  Land  Tenure 

How  large  should  a  farm  be  and  should  the  occupant 
own  or  rent  it }  There  is  neither  time  nor  space  to  discuss 
these  questions  in  all  their  bearing  even  if  I  were  able, 
which  I  am  not,  but  there  are  a  few  issues  upon  which 
teachers  should  be  informed. 

As  men  differ  in  capacity,  so  farms  should  differ  in  size, 
and  the  fit  between  the  two  should  be  fairly  good.  To  put 
a  forty-acre  man  on  a  hundred-  or  a  thousand-acre  farm  is 
not  a  good  use  of  land  and  the  public  is  not  well  served. 
On  the  other  hand,  to  put  a  hundred-  or  thousand-acre 


THE  MEANING  OF  AGRICULTURE  191 

man  on  a  forty-acre  farm  is  to  cramp  the  business,  to  un- 
derwork the  farmer,  and  to  deprive  the  family  of  its  natural 
advantages.  The  public  also  is  deprived  of  what  it  might 
enjoy.  In  both  instances  the  public  suffers  —  in  the 
former  because  the  land  is  not  well  employed ;  in  the  latter 
because  a  family  is  not  fully  supplied.  The  first  illustrates 
the  condition  in  England,  where  small  farms  are  bought  up 
and  turned  into  hunting  parks  for  the  land-holding  gentry  ; 
the  second  illustrates  the  condition  in  the  other  island 
empire,  Japan,  where  the  holdings  are  too  small  for  the 
best  results  upon  the  people.  We  cannot  here  discuss 
the  questions  of  maximum  production,  but  it  is  sufficient 
for  the  purpose  to  say  that  what  is  desired  is  not  neces- 
sarily the  highest  absolute  yields  per  acre,  but  rather  the 
highest  yields  from  the  land  consistent  with  the  best  wel- 
fare of  the  farmer  and  his  family. 

Nobody  knows  whether  the  public  is  better  served  when 
the  farmer  owns  his  farm  or  when  he  rents  it,  though 
without  doubt  the  man  himself  is  better  off  as  an  owner. 
But  from  the  public  point  of  view  one  thing  is  clear :  if  a 
man  owns  more  land  than  he  can  operate  or  than  he  de- 
sires to  operate,  thereby  becoming  a  lease-holder,  then  he 
should  become  also  a  land  manager,  increasing  production 
by  virtue  of  his  control,  and  not  a  mere  collector  of  rents 
through  an  agent. 

If  the  farmer  must  always  and  everywhere  be  a  renter, 
then  the  land  had  better  be  owned  by  the  public  after  the 
theories  of  Henry  George.  Unless  private  ownership  can 
mean  something  more  than  an  easy  life  for  a  land-holding 
aristocracy,  it  will  inevitably  pass  away,  and  the  passing 
may  be  more  sudden  and  violent  than  we  might  suppose. 
The  man  who  owns  land,  whether  it  be  much  or  little, 
owes  an  obligation  to  the  general  public  in  proportion  as 


192  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

he  affects  the  very  conditions  of  existence  by  controlling 
the  food  supply. 

Not  only  that ;  he  is  responsible  also  for  the  lives  of  the 
people  who  work  the  land.  Everywhere  with  increasing 
population  land  has  become  so  precious  as  to  be  beyond 
the  possibility  of  ownership  by  any  but  the  wealthy,  and 
everywhere  and  always  the  owner  has  been  hard  upon  the 
renter.  Now  if  the  owner  is  nothing  but  a  tax-gatherer, 
he  will  one  day  be  eliminated  as  a  useless  obstruction  be- 
tween the  producing  and  the  consuming  public.  No 
family  has  a  right  generation  after  generation  to  levy  trib- 
ute on  the  land  and  its  occupants  unless  by  superior  man- 
agement it  adds  substantially  to  the  production  of  those 
lands  and  to  the  happiness  of  the  people. 

Better  farming  can  be  done  with  capital  than  without  it, 
and  it  is  possible  for  owner  and  tenant  by  working  together 
to  be  mutually  benefited  thereby  and  incidentally  to  serve 
the  public  better  than  by  exclusive  individual  ownership. 
If  this  is  to  be,  however,  certain  principles  must  be  under- 
stood and  practiced. 

1.  It  must  be  a  share  rent,  which  divides  the  risk,  and 
not  a  money  rent,  which  throws  all  the  hazard  upon  the 
party  least  able  to  bear  it,  thereby  reducing  the  grade  of 
farming  that  will  be  carried  on,  besides  increasing  individ- 
ual bankruptcy  and  poverty. 

2.  The  lease  must  protect  the  land  in  its  fertility  and 
its  full  producing  power,  for  no  generation,  whether  land- 
lord or  tenant  or  both  combined,  has  a  right  to  exploit  the 
soil  and  leave  it  worn  and  depleted  for  the  next.  The 
coming  generations  will  be  more  numerous  than  the  pres- 
ent. They  should  be  more  cultivated  and  they  will  doubt- 
less have  greater  needs  than  ours.  We  must  not  cut  them 
off  while  they  are  yet  unborn. 


THE  MEANING  OF  AGRICULTURE  193 

3.  The  lease  must  run  for  a  period  of  years  in  order  to 
insure  that  stability  which  is  necessary  to  business  pros- 
perity and  to  the  successful  rearing  of  a  family. 

4.  The  owner  should  install  and  maintain  a  decent 
home  and  pleasant  surroundings  as  part  of  the  equipment. 
The  farm,  whoever  owns  it,  will  be  raising  children.  In 
justice  to  the  hard-working  wife  and  mother,  in  justice 
to  the  boys  and  girls,  in  justice  to  the  public,  whose  citi- 
zens they  will  shortly  be,  this  farm  must  not  be  less 
desirable  as  a  place  in  which  to  be  born  and  to  live  simply 
because  the  owner  and  the  occupant  do  not  happen  to  be 
the  same  person.  The  problem  is  difficult,  —  that  I  know 
both  by  observation  and  by  experience,  —  but  the  owner 
and  the  tenant  have  this  to  work  out  together  or  one  day 
the  public  will  take  the  matter  in  hand  and  settle  it  on 
general  principles. 

5.  Collateral  with  the  lease  must  go  the  joint  obligation 
of  landlord  and  tenant  to  maintain  as  good  schools  as  if 
the  owner  worked  the  land.  The  children  and  the  public 
generally  must  not  suffer  by  the  accident  that  the  land  is 
operated  as  a  joint  enterprise. 

These  considerations  lie  heavy  upon  every  owner  of 
land,  whether  he  bought  it  at  a  price  in  the  twentieth 
century,  whether  he  secured  it  by  homesteading  it  in  the 
nineteenth,  or  whether  his  ancestors  obtained  it  by  con- 
quest in  the  fourteenth  century.  Ownership  of  land  is 
justified  only  when  accompanied  by  some  kind  of  real 
service  to  the  general  pubHc,  and  that  service  in  my  opinion 
can  be  greater  with  private  than  with  public  ownership. 
But  we  have  much  to  learn.  Because  the  landowner,  large 
or  small,  is  in  a  position  to  render  peculiar  service  if  he 
will ;  because  as  many  men  as  possible  should  own  their 
own  vine  and  fig-tree  and  the  roof  above  their  heads; 


194  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

and  because  of  the  divine  effect  of  ownership  and  the 
general  weakness  of  humanity,  I  would  have  a  credit 
system  which  would  make  ownership  of  real  estate  as  easy 
as  possible,  not  as  difficult. 


The  People  of  the  Farm 

When  we  remember  that  farming  engages  the  lives  of 
a  third  of  all  our  people  and  that  they  live  in  the  country 
with  all  it  may  mean  for  good  or  for  evil,  the  full  signifi- 
cance of  the  human  side  of  country  life  begins  to  come 
home  to  us.  If  farming  conditions  are  not  to  be  com- 
fortable or  humanizing  or  elevating  or  educational,  then 
our  general  civilization  is  bound  to  suffer  constant  and 
ever-recurring  dilution  from  the  untoward  elements  born 
into  it. 

If  the  people  of  the  open  country  are  not  what  they 
ought  to  be,  then  the  land  will  not  produce  its  best,  the 
body  politic  will  be  sick  at  heart,  and  civilization  will  go 
limping  forward  with  a  ball  and  chain  about  its  heels. 
But  this  can  only  come  about  from  a  general  disregard 
of  the  meaning  of  the  situation.  If  the  cities,  which  are 
the  centers  of  progress,  choose  to  ignore,  despise,  or  ex- 
ploit the  country,  they  can  do  so  in  the  future  as  in  the 
past.  In  this  country  it  was  not  possible  until  now,  for 
land  was  abundant,  but  from  now  on  it  is  possible,  and 
the  proper  development  of  the  land  and  her  people  is  a 
general  problem  that  rests  equally  upon  men  and  women 
of  all  classes. 

The  city  is  not  only  the  center  of  progress  and  of  life; 
it  is  also  the  natural  whirlpool  that  gathers  and  holds  the 
unsuccessful  and  the  desperate  people  of  all  classes  and 
of  both  sexes.      Foredoomed  to  extinction,   leaving  on 


THE  MEANING,  OF  AGRICULTURE  195 

civilization  only  a  sore  while  they  live  and  when  they  are 
gone  a  scar  in  the  shape  of  ill-begotten  and  worse  developed 
offspring,  largely  degenerate  and  a  burden  upon  society 
until  natural  selection  shall  weed  them  out,  these  derelicts 
are  a  perpetual  menace.  Extremes  do  not  so  often  meet 
in  the  open  country.  The  highly  specialized  in  all  direc- 
tions go  naturally  if  not  necessarily  to  the  city,  many  of 
them  to  distinction,  some  to  extinction.  While  it  cannot 
be  proved,  I  confidently  believe  that  of  all  the  people  that 
shall  occupy  this  country  a  thousand  years  from  now, 
more  will  be  directly  descended  from  the  one-third  that 
occupy  our  farms  to-day  than  will  count  their  descent  from 
the  two-thirds  who  live  in  our  cities. 

For  many  reasons  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  in  general 
the  country  is  the  breeding  ground  of  the  race.  It  has 
many  and  powerful  facilities  for  affording  normal  develop- 
ment, but  we  are  not  to  be  deceived ;  it  has  no  means  of 
putting  into  a  race  that  which  is  not  there  already.  Sun- 
light, free  air,  fresh  fields,  beautiful  landscape,  inspiring 
views,  —  all  these  are  exhilarating  and  mightily  powerful 
in  developing  character  and  inspiring  ideals,  but  they  are 
not  hereditary,  and  if  the  soul  is  lost  out  of  the  race,  they 
will  be  powerless  to  restore  it. 

Believe  me  that  in  the  long  run  the  people  of  our  race 
will  be  no  better  than  the  people  on  the  farms ;  and  that 
always  as  now  the  country  will  afford  the  most  favorable 
of  all  opportunities  for  establishing  and  maintaining  those 
conditions  of  life  which,  upon  the  whole,  are  best  calculated 
for  the  development  of  man  and  his  highest  civilization. 
Here  is  humanity  unadulterated  by  its  most  vicious  elements. 
Here  is  temptation  reduced  to  the  minimum.  Here,  with 
but  half  the  attention  bestowed  upon  the  cities,  are  health 
and  prosperity.     Here  is  the  normal  man   at  home  sur- 


196  EDUCATION  FOR  EFFICIENCY 

rounded  by  normal  influences.  See  to  it,  all  whose  busi- 
ness it  is,  that  in  this  day  of  rapid  development,  the  farmer 
be  not  left  behind  in  any  particular,  especially  in  his 
education. 

The  country  is  the  natural  home  of  industry  and  thrift, 
twin  brothers  to  competence,  morality,  and  happiness.  In 
the  country  we  sow  what  we  expect  to  reap,  and  we  reap 
what  we  sow,  whether  it  be  grain  or  tares.  Moreover, 
every  man  sows  and  reaps,  not  another's,  but  his  own  that 
God  has  given  him  as  a  reward  for  his  labor.  Thus  early 
and  continually  is  a  wholesome  lesson  well  taught.  By 
any  count  the  typical  American  citizen  lives  in  the  country 
and  on  the  farm.  He  is  practically  the  only  man  that  is 
free  even  in  a  democracy,  and  on  him  will  one  day  fall  the 
burden  of  maintaining  the  balance  of  power  for  righteous- 
ness in  the  conduct  of  public  affairs. 


YB  3560 


f^  JT   I  ()  Cr  4         VOCATIONAL  EDIKSA 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


IB 


!  i: 


!  [| 


'ill' 


m 


m 


•)i( 


lliliiiii 


iilliijiiliii 


